Series Title: Monstrosities
Author: D.L. SchizoAuthoress
Rating: R
Notes: The story of 'Monstrosities' is meant to have three arcs, which show the adventures and development of Tira Hrafn, from the time of the story 'Rainy Nights', to the beginning of her Tale of Souls. These arcs may be contained in a single chapter, or they may span quite a few. They are:

On Black Wings (post-Rainy Nights, pre-Nightmare,
Willing Slave (when Tira presents herself to Nightmare), and
Gods and Demons (the beginning of Tira's quest).

Some things to remember from the prequel: Tira's foster family was Scandinavian, and the only one she loved was Ragnfrid Hrafn, the weaker of the thirteen-year-old twin girls. The Bird of Passage members killed during the raining down of the Evil Seed are the Watchers in her murder of ravens. The murder of the Hrafn family takes place about a year before the beginning of the Tale of Souls.

Okay, now you are prepped and ready to enjoy the story!

Monstrosities : On Black Wings
a soul calibur 3 fanfic by d.l. schizoauthoress

Tira travels through northern Europe quickly, leaving a path of death and destruction wherever she goes. Once, simply because the whim struck her, she set fire to a small town and sent her Watchers in to harry the fleeing people, keeping them inside the perimeter so that she could watch them burn. After this, she decides to head toward Spain, recalling that several pirate crews liked to use a certain Spanish port town as their landed base-of-operations.

Including the crew of the infamous Adrian.


Checking her steady southward progress and heading towards Holland, Tira encounters a Dutch trader on a little-frequented path through an evergreen forest. She notices him long before he would have had a chance to notice her, and vanishes into the treetops.

From her secure perch on the side of the roadway, Tira observes the actions of the merchant and his handful of bodyguards with growing disgust. At least three of the six armed men are drunk, speaking loudly and stumbling, while the others are slashing haphazardly at the trees under the pretense of scaring away an attack.

'The only thing these men are frightening,' Tira sneers silently, 'are forest animals. Any experienced outlaw would recognize them for the amateurs they are!'

One hastily thrown knife comes too close to Tira's hiding place for her comfort and, with quick, angry motions, she returns the blade. But her counter is much more effective, catching the dark-haired man right in the throat. Even before the dead man's knees buckle, Tira leaps clear of her hiding place. The soft sound of her booted feet landing on the top of the wagon blends with the sound of his body hitting the ground.

Not that the subterfuge was necessary, given that the man's companions have seen her emerge from the cover of the trees. But Bird of Passage training runs deep in Tira, a fact that dooms these people even before the fight begins.

"I'm annoyed," Tira announces, "I'm going to make you fools disappear forever."


In a perfect world, if an assassin has done their job right, there will be no pursuit to shake nor detection to avoid. But Tira cannot kill everyone that she comes across to keep them from spreading tales. Neither can Tira avoid the need to eat and sleep, and though she can easily eschew the comforts of a town inn, it is easier to use the gold she scavenges off dead bodies to buy food other than meat, rather than to kill for it. Also, carrying a lot of extra money is an invitation for bandits and thieves.

Tira is confident that she can handle any attack, but it is foolish to hold pride above rationality, just as it is foolish to take unnecessary risks while venturing into unknown territory. So, before she leaves the Scandinavian regions, she changes her appearance. Using supplies that she finds in the wagon of the recently deceased trader, she employs her meager skills as a seamstress to make a completely new outfit.

A few reddish-brown pelts of fox fur are sewn and stretched over metal gauntlets, creating braces that cover her entire forearm, to which she adds thick silver arm-rings to protect her upper arms. A third pelt is sewn onto a strip of silk and tied in the back, with a single thin strap over her left shoulder to hold it up. Next, Tira discovers a pair of blue leather pants that resemble the breeches of her favorite green garb, slit up the outsides from the knee and held together with a silver ring at mid-thigh. Tira dons her new clothes and admires herself in the shiny flat of her primary Aiselne Drossel.

She colors her lips with blue makeup and paints a vertical abstract pattern down one side of her face, from forehead to cheek. Then she fingers the greyish blonde strands of her hair, which have turned such an unappealing color as the blue-green dye faded and her roots grew out.

'It wouldn't do to have put in this much work for a new outfit,' she admits to herself, 'only to be identified by the color of my hair.' So, instead of re-dying with the same color, Tira opts to return to her natural shade of auburn.

She laughs merrily as she pulls on her long boots and ties her hair into low pigtails with strips of blue cotton cloth, finishing off the outfit with a wide, dark blue silk ribbon tied in a bow at her throat. Soon, she will be a new land, full of new victims to fill her with pleasure as they die at her hand. But first, Tira must think of a cover story. It's easier to stow away on a ship if you have no possessions to worry about, but Tira has gathered quite a few, none of which she wishes to abandon. So she dedicates her last night in the land of her normal life to the formulation of an alibi.

'My clothing, and my ringblades, are really the only things I have that can't be replaced. I suppose I might be able to pass for a weapons merchant,' Tira contemplates, sipping from a flagon of ale as she watches the setting sun. 'I'll have to brush up on my Romany accent, though...there's no way these Dutch traders will believe that a Nordic girl would travel alone.'

Thanks to her training with the Bird of Passage, Tira is proficient in the use of many arms, not just her ringblade. She prefers throwing knives and daggers if her usual weapon cannot be implemented, but can also use wave swords, whips, or crossbows to devastating effect. As the reddish glow of dusk deepens to purple twilight, the young woman once again raids the dead merchant's store of goods, this time for weapons. Only after she has a decent and varied collection does Tira bed down for the night, lulled to a dreamless sleep by the sounds of her ravens.


Tira unfastens the traces holding the grey gelding to the merchant's cart, giving the gentle beast a final pat before she accepts payment from the horse dealer at her side. The old woman makes a clicking sound with her tongue, leading the horse a few paces. She nods in acknowledgement to Tira.

"Fine animal, this one. I tell you again, girl, you're taking a loss, selling him for as little as you have."

Tira gives a little wave of dismissal and replies in Dutch, not forgetting to speak with a slight Gypsy accent. "Pocket the profits, grandmother! We all have to live in this world until we die. Time is best spent in comfort."

The woman laughs, a high, horsey sound. "Aren't you the wise one! Blessings on you, for your kindness to an old lady."

'It's not kindness that motivates me,' Tira thinks darkly, 'But haste, and fear. Fear that I may be caught before my ship puts out to sea.' However, instead of voicing her thoughts, Tira merely nods and calls over one of the sailors.

She pays him with the horse dealer's coins, in exchange for his services in getting her cargo on board. In the interest of staying undetected, Tira has packaged all three of her ringblades, arming herself with a pair of daggers instead. It seems to be working. Everything has gone quite smoothly ever since she started for the Dutch port city that morning.

Everything continues to go smoothly as Tira pays for her ticket, verifies the amount and type of cargo that she is bringing onboard the ship (signing with a neatly written false name, of course), and purchases a drink and small lunch in a bar. The place is located near the docks, which Tira finds convenient. In fact, her mood is beginning to lighten, and she even laughs to herself when she hears a group of mariners telling bawdy jokes. But Tira's cheerfulness is short-lived, coming to an abrupt end as one of the barmaids puts a mug of beer on her table.

She glances up at the sullen-looking barmaid through her bangs, and snaps, "I didn't order this."

"You didn't, but he did," the young woman answers, indicating a bald man sitting at the bar. "Paid for it and told me to give it to you."

She is blonde, moderately pretty, with a plump mouth and slightly wideset eyes of a striking green. Her blouse is low-cut to accent her feminine charm, and she is wearing just a little too much makeup.

Tira senses her resentment and thinks, 'Silly little bitch,' with a brief smirk. 'I don't want the attention of some scummy port-hopping sailor.'

"I don't want it." Tira replies flatly. "Give it back to him, please."

"Give it back to him yourself," the woman retorts. "I've got a lot of work to do."

Purple eyes flash with anger and narrow for a moment. Then, Tira stands and hefts the mug in one hand. She cocks her head to the side and slowly, deliberately, pours the beer down the front of the blonde barmaid's blouse. Whistles and catcalls follow her actions, and the woman--who can't be more than a few years Tira's senior--slaps Tira across the face.

In an instant, the slender brunette has her Jambiya dagger out. She shoves the barmaid backward with her free hand, and the blonde falls onto an unoccupied table. Moving fast, Tira has one arm across the woman's neck, and the blade poised a hairbreadth from her right eye. "If you want to keep both of your pretty eyes, slut, you'll apologize right now."

"Go to h--" the woman begins, but finishes with a scream. Blood gouts thickly from the wound in her cheek, the flow worsening as Tira frees her blade. Then she turns her fist so that her thumb points out and the dagger lies flat against the inside of her wrist. With a pleased smile, she shoves her pointed thumbnail deep into the woman's eye socket.

"You irritate me."


Luckily for the female assassin, most of the people in the bar are too busy dealing with the mutilated, wailing barmaid to give chase. And those that do are pretty seriously drunk, and easily evaded. But the harbor police are sensitive to disturbances in their area, quickly noticing and joining the pursuing party.

Having doubled-back several times to try to shake her pursuers, Tira nears the docks just as her ship begins to disembark. She leaps high, twisting in mid-air, and grabs one of the black pouches hanging at her waist. She flings the flash-bomb at the group chasing her, laughing as it goes off in their faces. Mostly, it causes temporary blindness, but for the unfortunate officer who is leading, the blindness might well be permanent. Going into a forward roll upon landing, Tira quickly gets to her feet and dashes to the end of the pier.

Drawing her second dagger, Tira launches herself into the air again, performing an aerial move similar to her Diving Wing Flap. As planned, this gives her enough momentum to cross the distance between the deck of the ship and the pier. She stabs downward with both blades, sticking them into the rail. Several crewmen help her aboard; one of them is the man who loaded her possessions onto the ship.

"Thank you, thank you," she says breathlessly.

The shortest of the crewmen gives her a friendly slap on the back. "Don't mention it, lovely one. We act out of admiration for such a skilled fighter! That was a very dramatic escape!"

"You like acrobatics, my clan are wonderful acrobats!" Tira lies, smiling brightly. "Also very skilled gamblers. That is how I learn to run from law-keepers so good!"

They laugh and nod, believing her lies. Tira breathes a sigh of relief.


Weeks wasted on a cargo ship (during which time she managed to limit her urge to kill, and the crew was only lessened by two) followed by weeks wasted attempting to track the Adrian. Tira stomps her foot in a fit of temper, muttering, "Aww, I wanted to have some fun."

The only benefits she has reaped from her detour into the Spanish Empire are merely material. She had purchased several pewter charms, in the shape of skulls, to adorn her dark-gold outfit and the copies she'd ordered up. A much more skilled seamstress than Tira has taken the dress that Ragnfrid designed and produced two different-colored copies of it. One was the rich red of fresh blood, and Tira had bought a pair of boots in similar red leather. The other was pure white, with which she wore the same red boots.

One material possession that Tira has acquired in Spain is much more important than those that expanded her wardrobe. It is the newest weapon of her collection, a delicate but powerful six-bladed ringblade. Good luck brought her to the blacksmith shop where the ancient smith worked, a week after her arrival.


Tira had taken to the back alleys and rooftops of the city as soon as she arrived. She sold all her excess weapons, keeping her Jambiya daggers, a pair of wave swords, and her own hoop-shaped blades. She kept all of them in the room she rented, for appearances' sake, at a grubby little inn--all except, of course, whichever ringblade she decided to carry with her that day.

On the day that she discovered the blacksmith shop which would produce her a new weapon, Tira carried her secondary Aiselne Drossel with her, slung over her left shoulder in such a way that the other end rested on her right hip. This made her progress over the roofs of the city much easier, as she leapt from place to place, observing with keenly focused senses all that went on. She was becoming frustrated, for there were no more leads about the Adrian or its legendary captain, Cervantes de Leon. She was also getting quite bored, since she hadn't made a kill in three days. And that one had been awfully dull, only a poorly-trained soldier who'd barely lasted ten minutes against her.

By that afternoon, Tira was smoldering with rage. She'd managed to glean only one bit of new information from all her eavesdropping, and it was thoroughly disappointing. The current rumor was that the Adrian had sunk somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. But Tira was sure that Cervantes, who had held the sword 'Soul Edge' for so long, was not as dead as tale-tellers might wish him. The Bird of Passage had known of Soul Edge for a long time before Tira joined them, often undertaking missions to eliminate the wrong sort of people from searching for it. Abaddon had often related his story of killing a former Ming mercenary on the Yangtze River to Tira.

Old deaths, cursed swords, and recollections of her life as a hired assassin were no comfort to Tira now. She crouched on the sloping roof of a large house with the brass-and-steel Drossel clenched in one hand, sweating in the midday sun and cursing her circumstances. She'd been looking forward to the challenge that taking on a crew of corsairs would present to her, only to find out that they were probably rotting at the bottom of the ocean along with the two sailors she'd dumped over the rails on her way here.

'If only I could find some other Bird of Passage members. There must be somebody still alive.' Tira thought forlornly. 'Then I could go back to my old life...my real life...'

The clang of metal upon metal shook Tira out of her reverie. Annoyed, she scanned the area and quickly saw the source of the disturbance. Two men were dueling in the courtyard of the house. As Tira watched, the younger of the pair lunged ungracefully at his opponent, getting a slash across the cheek in return. She growled with longing at the sight of blood, and with hardly a thought, flung herself off the high roof toward the duelists.

She propelled herself through the center of her large weapon, landing with a side roll that flowed perfectly into a crouching guard stance. She laughed, "Who wants to die first?"

The elder of the two men rightly interpreted this as the serious threat that it was and turned to run. Tira jumped to her feet and gave chase, hitting him with a sliding kick from behind. As he stumbled away, she rose with her back to him and, holding the Aiselne Drossel in her right hand, threw her weight backwards while balancing on her left leg. The Backside Pointe struck off-center, merely wounding him in the shoulder. He stabbed at her exposed lower back, but her quick dodging kept her from being seriously wounded.

She had to go on guard for a long time, dodging his furious combinations. She hated going against fencers--they were relentlessly stubborn, and it was difficult to break their momentum once an attack really got started. Soon, she was bleeding from many minor cuts on her body and a deeper one to her scalp, and her arms were beginning to go numb. But he, too, was wearing down, injured in several places as well.

Tira faced him, striking out with a Vibrato Flutter. The first horizontal blow sang as one of the spikes of her weapon scraped against the edge of his rapier blade, but when she twirled the hoop on her wrist, this series of strikes hit home, shredding the man's abdomen. Tira shrieked with pleasure as blood spurted from his wounds, spattering her face and body. The man fell to the ground, screaming in agony. He was still alive, but he would pose no threat while she dealt with his younger companion.

"Who's next?" Tira crowed delightedly. The sight of the empty courtyard disturbed her a bit, and she pouted, "That's all? There's no one else?"

The young woman licked her lips, enjoying the flavor of blood upon them for a moment. Then her sharp eyes noted the disturbance of footprints in the dust. She looked closer, and soon found a set that was coupled with a some small drops of blood every few paces. These led out into the street. Eyes bright with anticipation, Tira skipped away, using her weapon like a jumprope.

She passed the outer wall of the property and immediately spotted her target. "Don't run away!" She cried, for that was exactly what he was doing, heading straight for the blacksmith shop across the road.

Tira switched from her playful skipping into an Agrement Double Claw, kicking the young man down. He was tougher than he appeared to be, and definitely more resilient than the older one, because he recovered quickly, and swept her feet from under her. Grasping one of the raised, stylized skulls on the inside of her weapon, Tira drove the spiked part into the ground and back-flipped over it, away from her opponent.

They glared at one another for a moment. The young man spat out several unoriginal curses in Spanish, mostly about her being a whore, and the daughter of a whore.

Unaffected by this, Tira smiled and pirouetted once, having decided that her next attack would be a Chattering Mandible. Holding her arms out, she spun her ringblade on her wrist three times, gaining speed with each revolution. Then she moved toward the man, and dealt him a punishing uppercut blow with the bladed section below one of the spikes. He flew high into the air, and landed on the ground with incredible force.

He gasped, trying to get air into his lungs. The fall had knocked the wind out of him. Tira snickered and hefted her blade in one hand, blowing him a kiss with her free one.

"Hey, does it hurt? Really?" She asked him tauntingly.

"Stop!" shouted a new voice.

Tira paused and glanced in the direction of the voice. It belonged to a very old man, who was hobbling out of the shop. One of his legs was twisted and lame, and what little hair he had left was sparse and white, but he hefted his hammer easily, eyes blazing with anger. Tira wondered if he actually meant to attack her with his smithing tool, or if it was a bluff.

"Old man, do you want me to kill you, too?"

The blacksmith positioned himself between Tira and the youth. "You won't kill anyone!" he declared. The young man had regained his breath, and his feet, by now.

"She killed Uncle Tomas, Abuelo," he said raspily, "let me avenge him!"

"Be silent, Carlos!" The blacksmith snapped.

"I could easily kill you both," Tira pointed out in a very matter-of-fact tone.

"And I," the old man replied, "can give you something very valuable. Much more valuable than the lives of my grandson and myself."

Intrigued despite herself, Tira stepped closer. "What could that be, old man?"

Carlos seized what seemed like opportunity and attacked. But the casual way that Aiselne Drossel hung from Tira's hand was misleading. She immediately whipped it upward into a guard that deflected his blows, and reached through the opening in the middle. Grabbing his shoulder, she performed a Death Spindle throw, shoving him hard to throw off his balance and torquing her hip, then hitting him with a horizontal blow as she twisted back to face front.

"Out of the way!" she snarled. He was lucky that she had flipped the Drossel the other way around, so that the duller side of the spikes hit him. It had occured to her that the grandfather might not talk to her if she killed his grandson right then. And if what the old man said didn't interest her, she could always hunt for Carlos later.

As it was, his grandfather picked him up from the ground and slapped the side of his head. "Cool your temper, boy, or you'll follow Tomas. Can't you see that this girl has no mercy for you? Now get out of here."

Tira smiled despite herself. The old blacksmith's way with his grandson reminded her of the way that Abaddon used to treat her.

"I will make you a new weapon, designed from the one you are carrying." The blacksmith told her. "I can make you a much more powerful blade, one that will strengthen you when you fight with it. All I ask is that you leave my family, the de la Cruz family, alone."

Tira agreed. The promise of a new toy was enough to change her mood to one of good cheer. And she was not disappointed in the least.


Soon after gifting her with the Ixion, as Tira came to call her new weapon, the old blacksmith passed away. It was not Tira who brought death to him, but another woman, whose brother had died on a blade forged by SeƱor de la Cruz. And so, it was with great joy in her heart that Tira first painted the gold-and-silver blades of black Ixion with the blood of the old man's murderer.

Tira smirks at the thought and smooths the over-tunic of her gold-colored outfit. It is late evening, and even though she is still mildly upset over the lack of pirates to kill, she is not terribly bothered by it. There is always blood to be had. And perhaps the pirates stay away out of fear of the Bird of Passage. She still holds out the hope that other assassins like herself are in the world, secretly swaying the balance of power throughout Europe.

Holding the slim, gleaming weapon behind her back, Tira stands in the shadows and listens to the conversations flowing around her. After a month and a half of relative inaction here, Tira expects nothing. She is surprised, and not unpleasantly, to hear new and more urgent rumors than she has been lately.

They all concern a man, though some insist that he is a monster, called the Azure Knight. Everyone agrees that he slaughters people without distinguishing between warriors and innocents, but some claim that he prefers to kill powerful fighters and magic-users. A few call him by another name, a name that describes him perfectly: they call him Nightmare.

Tira perks up, listening eagerly to the tales of chaos and horror that the men spin amongst themselves. Perhaps this was what she had been waiting for. Perhaps this man could be her new master, the master she has been searching for since the loss of Abaddon. She shivers, and thinks,

'Yes, this is the one I can devote myself to. He is like me exactly, needing to kill, needing to feed on pain and death! I will find him. I will find Nightmare!'

TO BE CONTINUED...