The canals of Venetia, even under Christian regime, always had a need for cunning folk.
Tabula Rasa was the most renowned of these so-called 'white witches', trained by her grandmother, who had raised her since she was just a pup. Some of her earliest memories were of dark, candlelit rooms with the strong scents of herbs permeating the air, of her grandmother instructing her on both the arts of Stregheria and wortcunning. She had been taught the deepest secrets of the Old Religion, forbidden parts which would have earned her a visit from the Inquisition.
Tabula Rasa had been born with the caul draped over her head like a hood, which was a sign of vast magical power in many cultures around the world. Combined with her albinism, her grandmother had always said that she had much more responsibility placed upon her than the average cunning woman. As a white witch, these responsibilities included being a healer, fortune teller, midwife, and in extreme circumstances, an exorcist. She had taken to the Old Religion naturally, and by the time she was fifteen, her skill, beauty, and kindness had drawn people with every imaginable ailment from even other countries to heal them. She was much loved by all those in Venetia, and even the most cynical of bastards treated her like family.
She had been happy then, she remembered. Tabula Rasa had never desired anything more than to carry on her ancestral tradition, which was integral to the survival of Stregheria. Indeed, there were fewer and fewer witches at the secret gatherings – Treguendas - every year, hosted beneath the canescent moon and outside of the Catholic Church's watchful eye. Those meetings had allowed her to truly cast aside the facade she donned to the populace of Venetia- the mask that she was a slave to God, who had done nothing for the world but bring suffering and death to millions. Even now, she could recall the freedom she felt after dropping all pretenses as she joined her fellow witches beneath the full moon, in communal feasts and dancing nude around a bonfire. She should have known that it wouldn't last, that these were the final golden days before the dark age.
When Tabula Rasa was seventeen, she had met a man- another wolf- who had stumbled to her very doorstep and collapsed there. She had been grinding some herbs with a mortar and pestle by the light of a single beeswax candle, a small amount of frankincense smoking in a tiny porcelain incense burner. Her mind had been utterly focused on her task- she was making a tincture to treat someone's inflamed knees, which caused incredible pain for them- occasionally casting a glance at the recipe in her book of shadows. Something had made her stop. Something that would change her life for the better, for a time at least.
She had gotten up from her chair with a frown, uncertain as to what this feeling was. It was as though an inner voice had whispered into her head to check the door. She'd gotten up from her workshop, not knowing what it was, but trusting her own intuition. When Tabula Rasa had opened the door, she'd gotten quite the shock when she saw the large wolf who was laying in the street, one hand touching her door as though he was about to knock but fell unconscious. He had a pool of blood around him and was in dire need of healing. In the middle of the night, no one else was up to see him as he bled out his life in the streets
Tabula Rasa had been much too small to carry the much larger wolf, so she had had to run to her neighbor's house so they could help her. They were twin brothers, large bears who were as ornery as anything, but when they saw who was frantically knocking at their door, they accepted to help without hesitation. After the bears had lain down the wolf in one of the patient rooms, she immediately set to work, tying a tourniquet around his upper arm- his injury was a large slash from his wrist to his inner elbow- and then applying a poultice that would prevent infection. She stayed up for the rest of the night, doing everything she could do prevent his death,
Tabula Rasa, at the time, couldn't explain why she was so determined to save his life. She had lost a few patients who were lost causes, which had devastated her, and this male had been bleeding for a long time. Logic would have said that he was going to die, regardless of what she could do. Yet she didn't give up; she exhausted every ability she had, both magical and mundane, until morning came and she was forced to go to bed, defeated.
When the next morning came, she was surprised again.
The wolf was sitting up in his bed when she came to check if he was still alive, perfectly coherent and with all memories intact. He introduced himself to her as Giovanni, and told her how he had been injured. He was a cunning man, like her, in a small rural village not far from Venice. He had been paid a visit by a ruthless cardinal known only by the name Giuseppe, a name Tabula Rasa knew well. He was a fanatical witch hunter, who kept trying to enforce an Inquisition to root out and massacre all cunning folk in Italy, and then the world.
Giovanni had been injured by the cardinal's deadly stiletto, but he'd escaped before he could be tied to a stake and burned alive, after weeks of torture in Giuseppe's dungeon. He'd dragged himself through the streets of Venice, until he found her shop and finally collapsed of blood loss. He thanked her for saving his life, and said that he would trouble her no more but Tabula Rasa refused to allow him to leave. She'd said he could tear open the stitches she'd so carefully put in to place, and that was true, but it was more than that. He intrigued her in a way she had never felt before.
When she allowed him to walk again, Tabula Rasa took him out to some of her favorite places in Venetia. She would never forget sitting with Giovanni and watching the sun set in glorious hues over the canals, of the midnight gondola rides. It only had taken a few months for her to fall utterly in love with him, and within the next year, after her eighteenth birthday, they'd gotten married. It was a massive wedding; it seemed as though all of Venetia attended. She couldn't remember ever being so happy in her life, as she trudged down the path with the one she loved more than anything.
When Tabula Rasa's grandmother had died, he had held her in his arms as she wept. When she had given birth to their son, he had never left her side. She had named their only son Aurelio, in honor of her father who had died when she was only two years old. She'd never given up her ancestral trade of being a cunning woman, and Giovanni hadn't either. They made for a very effective pair, and in the two years their marriage had lasted, this never changed.
Until Giuseppe the witch hunter found where Giovanni had been hiding.
The two of them had been given a rude awakening one night, when Tabula Rasa had been sleeping curled in her husband's arms. The sound of a door being kicked down destroyed the peace of their home, and the crying of their son had caused them to run to his room, where they saw the red-clad figure leaning over Aurelio's cradle, a stiletto in hand that Giovanni was more than familiar with.
"Ah, greetings, Giovanni." Giuseppe said with a grin. He was a Pyrenean chamois, the ridiculous hat that cardinals wore making him look less intimidating than he should have. "Thought you could escape God's wrath, yes?"
Giuseppe's knights had seized the two of them, and thrown them in a prison with their son, who was just over a year old. First thing in the morning, he dragged the three of them out to large stake his men had set up during the night. There were hundreds of people there, looking on, not moving to stop the mad cardinal. Tabula Rasa had screamed and tried to fight her way out of her chains as they brought her husband and son to the stake and tied them to it. She begged the crowd as the flames rose, but none of them made a move, none of them helped. They just watched, cold, uncaring, as those she loved most in the world were burned alive.
She never did figure out why Giuseppe spared her life, and at the time, Tabula Rasa didn't care. His knights dragged her, still weeping, to the cardinals dungeons where he tortured witches. For months and months on end, he had tortured her, raped her, shamed her, until her entire body was covered with long, bloody cuts. She felt none of it. She had gone completely numb to the pain- no, that was a lie. She had begun to enjoy the agony he brought her, knowing that it was only a matter of time before all he'd done to her would return to him a thousandfold.
One day- or night, maybe, who could say?- after Giuseppe had finished with her and left her in a pool of her own blood, she stared at the crimson that stained her white fur. She had grown to love the color red in the past few months she'd been tortured. It was the color of pain, of passion, and of hatred. Her grandmother's promise to her that she would have great magical power rang in her ears again. She got the idea to use blood as a weapon, as she'd heard of hemomancers in the past doing. For days, she tried to move the blood with nothing more than her mind, and eventually, she succeeded. When Giuseppe came for her again, she endured the torture with a smile. She learned to give blood shape, to freeze it into spears, to boil it into a weapon of agony, and a thousand other ways to murder.
She did this all without him knowing, and one day when he came to resume his sadistic pleasure, she was ready for him. Tabula Rasa killed both the knights who came with him, and then blasted Giuseppe back with nothing more than the force of her hatred. He'd hit a door that he often went into after he was finished with her in the past, and she followed him in. The sight that greeted her was the last one she was expecting. There were altars with dark sigils on them, and an entire alchemy laboratory filled with all sorts of esoteric contraband- likely taken from witches he'd burned.
"This was why you did what you did?" Tabula Rasa snarled, advancing on Giuseppe as he crawled back, begging for mercy. "I hope that God grants you mercy. Because only the Devil looks upon you now." Then she put a curse on him, one she had been devising while he had his way with her. She slowly made his blood boil, gradually heating up until his screams played a glorious symphony and the flesh began the bubble and melt off of his bones. She turned and left the dungeon, but she knew that her revenge had yet to be complete.
Those who had once been her friends- those whose lives she had even saved, sometimes- who had watched her husband and baby burn without action, they all had to die. Her rage had become absolute, and she decided to use blood, their own blood, to give them unimaginable pain before Hell took them. She hid in a catacomb while she created the plague that would later become known as the Red Death. Tabula Rasa released the plague on the citizens of Venetia, and then began traveling all over Europe, spreading the Red Death wherever she went.
Tabula Rasa had a revelation, as she watched the people die choking on their own blood. It was the Catholic Church that had taken everything from her. Not just her, but for countless innocents, all to subjugate the world beneath them, under the guise of being an all-knowing, all-loving community that showed its compassion through genocide and torture. Death and agony would be the only reward they get for their zeal.
In a short amount of time, almost every town knew her face and had guards posted everywhere with orders to kill her on sight. They were no threat to Tabula Rasa, of course, but they would alert the people to her presence, and then they'd flee before she could spread her plague to them. Eventually, when on the road, contemplating on where to go next. She met a group of gypsies, who had faced persecution from the Catholic Church in the past, and joined them, taking on their flamboyant way of dressing and learning some of their tricks. Under the guise of a gypsy, she was able to sneak into many cities. When the guards gazes passed over them, all they saw were a bunch of gypsies, worthy only of contempt, but not slaying.
With them, Tabula Rasa was able to spread the Red Death all over Europe, killing millions. Only when she accidentally killed every gypsy that she traveled with (it wasn't her fault, she caught one of them praying to God), did she set out on her own. She began experimenting with all sorts of different magic systems. Intrigued by the fortune-telling the gypsies had taught her, she learned how to manipulate the very strands of fate for certain people, by tasting only a drop of their blood. She had become so powerful that any who stood in her way- or said a good word about the Catholic Church- suffered unimaginably painful demises.
But try as she might, she could never grow as strong as she desired. Her enemy was a massive beast with many heads, incredible power and all the wealth in the world. Even with as strong as her hatred and passion had made her, she couldn't stand against them alone. While the Red Death ravaged their territories, those who ruled sat behind thrones of gold, safe behind their riches and magical protection they jealously guarded against those they'd stolen them from. But They began whispering to her at night, beckoning her with promises of ruin and ancient, primordial wisdom. They haunted her dreams, and she realized that following the Nameless was the only hope she truly had to avenge her murdered family.
Tabula Rasa left Europe, never once looking back save to burn down a church with everyone still inside. Every day, they whispered to her, and she'd catch glimpses of the worms, Those Without Names, when the moon was full and smiling upon her. Where they were leading her, she couldn't have guessed, but she didn't care. Her vengeance was near, and when the time had come for her to mete out her retribution, the world will truly know her power.
Tabula Rasa smiled in anticipation, eager for the fruition of her destiny to reign in blood.