Alright, here it is, the final chapter of Chronicles of Bloodmane!
I won't say anything else so you can savor the moment. Enjoy!
Sorority: Chronicles of Bloodmane
Epilogue
"Wow." A ten-year-old girl looked at her mother with her mouth slack, amazed by her story.
"You should be wowed." Elysia leaned back, "Our Sorority didn't just appear out of thin air one day."
"So what happened next?" The girl asked with a small amount of excitement.
"I'll tell you…
We were on the run for a while, dodging the law once they found out what happened. But we would ambush their patrols and take their weapons. As our reputation grew, so did our numbers. We found another harem of slave girls more than willing to embrace the Lord of Skulls, a few orphans and runaways stuck with us and took our message, and even a few bored rich kids decided, "what the hell, they seem fun." By the time their PDF was marching to look for us, we had the fighting ability and weapons necessary to take them on. We did what we'd been doing, taking out patrols and raiding their outposts.
There's one raid in particular I remember like yesterday. The fight itself was pretty easy, considering how green they were. We were looting them for gear when Zipporah and Miele said, "Hey Elysia, we got a live one here!"
I couldn't believe who I was seeing. I still managed to recognize him after being enslaved and after nine years. It was Einhard, that boy I kissed when I was thirteen. I can still see the fear and surprise in his eyes when he recognized me. I swear time stopped. We both said each other's names in complete disbelief. "You two know each other?" Miele, or maybe it was Zipporah asked. I was like, "Yeah. Long time ago. Uh... spare him. I'll take care of it."
So I take him to an empty room in his station and just talk to him. Try and make sense of what was going on. Eventually it came back to when we were kids.
"Elysia," Einhard said to me, and I still know it perfectly to this day, "You were the one to me. I thought you and I were meant to be. I hadn't met a girl like you since then. I thought I was in love with you."
I started to cry. I couldn't love him back. I didn't know what love was anymore. "Einhard," I said, "I don't know what that means anymore. I've just been through too much."
I kept crying. Einhard came up behind me and gave me a hug. He was so selfless, even after I told him we could not be together. It was the first time in years someone did something loving to me. I didn't know how to really respond, so I overreacted. I just felt this need.
Then I realized what I'd done. He was an enemy of Khorne. I did shameful things with him. And I did them as a servant of Khorne. Einhard fell asleep. In a complete panic, I killed him, quick so he didn't die in pain. He was the only one I've ever regretted.
But then I found out I was carrying you a few days later. For the first time since I was enslaved, I felt real fear. Would my child be cursed? Would it be stillborn? Would I die delivering it? That night I didn't sleep, I was so worried.
For several days I thought and thought, unsure of what to do. I wouldn't kill something as small and helpless as a baby, but what about after it was born? And then it dawned on me: my kid would never have to experience the pain I did. You'd get to grow up innocent. You'd grow up without experiencing bondage. You'd have nothing to regret fighting the universe's need to bind its inhabitants. You'd be all the things life didn't let me be. That's what your name means. Herut. Freedom. Don't throw any of that away."
"I won't, Mom." Herut answered, her voice weighted with pride and sense of duty.
"Promise me?" Elysia smiled the way her own mother did so long ago when she left them behind.
"Promise."
"That's my girl."
By the time Herut was old enough to fight with her mother, Elysia had received several small rewards for her devotion to Khorne. Chief of which was that her hair became blood, meaning while it didn't change too much appearance-wise, the life-giving fluid now would drip and trickle with every movement she made. The second corresponded to the first, for Elysia's skin became snow-white, allowing the blood from both her hair and her foes to better be displayed for all to see. Her final blessing was a degree of improved strength, allowing her to swing both a chainsword and a chainaxe at once.
To the newest Sisters, and to those who somehow survived their encounter with them, Elysia became known as Bloodmane. She took the name as her own, and the title of Mistress of the Sisterhood when it was suggested to her by a corrupt ship captain while negotiating to get off-planet.
Zipporah was beginning to be referred to as High Priestess, for she effectively became Bloodmane's right hand, aiding her leader in planning tactics and almost always having her back in the heat of battle, saving Bloodmane from surprise attacks several times over the years. Alise, later renamed Sang-main, was considered Bloodmane's left hand, because of her keen business mind, offering advice to the messenger of Khorne when dealing with temporary alliances and securing means to travel to other worlds. Evette, who started going by Marheena, was also nicknamed "The Assassin" for her quiet demeanor and elegance on the battlefield, at least in comparison to the savagery of the other Sisters. Krissy, conversely, became Kafshë, for she lost any semblance of humanity when fighting, killing her enemies in a bloodthirsty dervish. Lanore soon became known as Lykaina, for while the Sorority had once taken refuge in a city, she, while in disguise, found an optometrist who could surgically alter one's eye color, kidnapping him and making the doctor change her greyish-brown eyes to a bestial, wolfish yellow, filing her teeth into points to complete the look. Other Sisters liked it, including the Mistress, to where she eventually decided that the practices of eye color changing and tooth filing became compulsory. Miele was gravely wounded in one battle when she was 27, nearly dying from a deep bite of a chainsword into her side (it just barely severed her spine, but she managed to shoot its owner in the face right before it did), but managed to recover, even becoming mother to a daughter a few years later, but the birth complicated her old wound, and she died not long afterwards.
Bloodmane herself left the mortal world at the age of sixty-four, in battle against a horde of Slaaneshi cultists. It is said she finally fell after hours of fighting, shouting her defiance and willingness to die upon a mountain of corpses, as the sun of the world they were on set.
The Sorority mourned her death for eight days, by indiscriminately killing what remained of the cult that claimed their leader's life until there were absolutely none left. Zipporah assumed command when the slaughter was complete, declaring no Sister should live past the age of Bloodmane upon death, "as a form of respect, and to die at an age where one still has the strength to swing a chainsword one last time." Through her, the Sisters established the traditions of learning to fight from birth to sixteen, fighting from sixteen to thirty-two, having and raising a daughter from thirty-two to forty-eight, and finally ending their life in a final battle by age sixty-four.
Herut later became a mother herself, naming her child Perdition. The granddaughter of Bloodmane lived up to her name, adorning herself in human remains to strike fear into the hearts of her enemies, earning her the nickname of "Walking Corpse" among Sisters. Perdition had her own daughter, who would become known as Toothknuckle (for she once punched an opponent hard enough in the mouth as to leave several of his teeth embedded in her fist, keeping them there as a trophy). Alas, she did not live much longer after receiving her new moniker to continue the lineage of Bloodmane, for she attacked a Guardsman who had been issued a plasma gun during a fight three years later, and his swing of the gun's stock at her face made the highly-volatile ammunition explode, killing them both.
And yet, although none of her descendants remained, Bloodmane's legacy never truly died, for the Sorority of Violence would continue to write their manifesto of violent freedom gained through bowing to Khorne in the blood of the Phlegyas Sector for years to come.
And so it ends. That's how the Sorority of Violence began.
Fear not, my dear readers, for while this story may be over, that of the current generation of Khorne's Daughters will continue soon, for I have finally managed to have an idea on how to keep it going. I can't say when it will be published, but know that it shall be.
See you then!
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention:
Herut does mean "freedom" in Hebrew (keeping the Exodus allusion)
Sang-main is a combination of the French words "blood" and "hand"
Marheena- Pashto for "death"
Kafshe- Albanian for "beast"
Lykaina- Greek for "she-wolf"
Ok, now bye for real!
