Episode III : Practice
Back then, in my first years in Ravensbruck, I didn't know what we were called. I didn't know there was a name for the chosen one, the girl with the strength to fight and kill evil things. I also didn't know there were rules against killing humans. But really, if I had, I wouldn't have done anything differently.
Lesson #1 : Practice makes perfect.
My first fight had lasted no more than five seconds and I had killed no more than two men. I knew that if I wanted to fight longer and harder and kill more men and be ready for the greater evil out there I had to work at it. Fortunately for me, I happened to be in the one place where I could get all the practice I needed. There are always more Nazis, right?
I started out by hiding and striking at them one at a time. Speed, thats important. If you can kill a man before he can call more men, no one knows you exist. Every night I found one or two or three alone, just standing, feeling safe and important and powerful. The more nights I spent in Hell the better I got. Soon, I saw them feeling less safe. They still had those powerful, important looks on their faces, but they weren't standing alone anymore. So I would kill two or three at a time. In one night, ten Nazis, dead.
Lesson #2 : Preparation makes effective.
In my dreams, the girls always fought with sticks. Sometimes they had knives or arrows, but always they carried sticks. Ravensbruck was full of sticks. One stick, sharpened to a point, can go straight through a man and kill him. Apparently if you put a stick through the heart of one of the monsters in my dreams, they turn to dust. Its a good skill to know in my line of work, and I embraced my destiny of sticks.
Surviving in Ravensbruck was a life of hiding, running from one place to the next, stealing, hoarding. Any child who survived the first few days knew this life. All over there were places no one knew about and only the smallest could get, and these became my treasure troves. No one misses sticks like they miss food or shoes, so by day I would gather them, sharpen them, and hide them. There was not one block without sticks, ready for me to strike through Nazi hearts.
Lesson #3 : Improvisation makes unstoppable.
As the weeks went on, I became intimately familiar with the feeling of a stick in my hand. I knew the amount of pressure it took to press through flesh, the space between ribs where it would strike true. But I saw the girls in my dreams, I felt their minds working to know death, and I wanted to know. How else can you kill a monster?
Hands. Rocks. Fire. Shoelaces around throats. Cloth stuffed down throats. Big cuts to the belly, small cuts to the wrists or necks. I even dreamed that sunlight would kill the monsters that turn to dust. As I sat waiting for the Nazis to come and die, I wished that they would walk into the sun and burst into flame, but my monsters were men. So I killed them every other way I could think of.
I may not have known that I was The Slayer, but I took my destiny to heart, and to the hearts of the evil men around me. Here in Ravensbruck, we had no names, we were creatures, nobodies - but I was not Nobody. I was special. So I gave myself a name, and in accepting the power of the line of girls that killed the monsters, I became Krukognia : Raven of Fire.