Shadow Spinners
Chapter Zero/Prologue
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Sony. Story line and actions done by the characters belong to me. No money was made during the making nor after it.
~The Threads of Fate are more than often spun by Shadow Spinners who make The Rope of Time.~
--Ilana Rehman
Dark eyes opened. Eyes that lend the seeker to an endless and infinite abyss.
The wind didn't even comfort me. My skull pounded, I looked around in a daze. Where am I? Moments passed as I waited for the answer to just come—as if I should know, in my drowsy bewilderment. I was there in the darkness for countless moments swaging in my muddled mind. So, this was time, I realized as my mind registered the fact.
Who am I?
Questions flooded my now vigilant, startled mind. What am I? How am I here? Where is here? Am I born? Born. Born? What is born? Where did this word 'born' come from? Where did I come from?
The answers were all the same: I didn't know. My unsteady hands went to refuge in my throbbing temples. A wave of sadness and angry confusion at myself over came me. Sadness? What is sadness? I pushed the thoughts away, mad at my ignorance. While characteristically, my face like stone. This. Sadness is this. What I am feeling right now.
My face muscles ache as I made an unfamiliar gesture; I smiled, it was a weak one where the corner of my mouth twitched but a smile nevertheless. I knew two things: Time and Sadness. I was absurdly glad. However, my gladness was short lived—another pang overtook me just for a moment.
I stared at the darkness really to soak in anything as I glazed at my surroundings. Fine rich-emerald-colored grass rooted itself on thick sturdy roots that held the huge trunks of trees up. Grass. My mind tasted it as I locked it in my memory. Endless fields of grass and trees. Forest. I held on to each revelation with warmth. It was all I knew.
I glanced at myself, I had a velvet-leather outfit that covered the upper part of my body fully yet, it lacked the same effect on my lower portion of my body, something like a tunic without the leggings; a skirt. I had no concept of nakedness so it didn't brother me at the least.
God knew how such knowledge came to me but I knew it as a fact that once this clothing was a darker hue of the color of the sky. Blue. However, something stained it and made it purple. Something that made it damp once more, right now. It was a word I knew that I knew once very well. For a moment I thought I grasped it but it then fled. I search my memory—nothing. Knowing nothing about myself as a constant reminder perturbed me, I gave up.
My stomach rumble. Food, I needed water—that I remembered. My tongue was also dry like sandpaper and stuck to the top of my mouth. During all this, I felt discomfort, my head continued to ache, I felt flushed.
Discomfort is just an annoyance. The quote was an instinct, maybe it telling something about me. Such hope felt unreasonably alien to me, as if a mucking ice-cool gel ran under my skin. I must find water, I thought not wanting to myself to be sidetracked. I got up on weak legs and started walking, trying to ignore the pain increasing in my head as I took each step, considering it annoyance. Water, I must find water first.
I was about to step on an object hidden in the grass when I spotted it. There was no gleam that helped me spot it for it there was no moon. But I felt it. As I held it in my hand nothing matter, everything disappeared. An unholy feeling of wholeness filled me which only made me grip tighter. Not with pride but with a grimacing respect.
It was a weapon. A sword. How I knew, I will never be able to explain. I felt as if I could and would never part with it. It was my drive, what I lived for.
I starred at the blade in the smoothing darkness that pressed on me yet at the same time breathed as I breathed as if it were alive. And it was, darkness was also me.
The saber had a dark muck on it, the same, I realized, as the one that tainted my clothing that gave it it's present color. The thought made me shudder yet I didn't. I starred at it in calm terror.
This rapier was me, down to every inch. I knew it in the marrow of my bones. We were both stained in this foil mire—what was the name?
Blood.
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Shadow Spinners
Chapter One
Blood, an ugly word. I would have liked to spit in distaste but didn't. This blood was me, no matter how I hated it. I put the rapier in it's sheath and walked on. It was not long till I felt eyes, prowling cruel eyes. I conceived I was being followed. Again, how I knew I didn't know. It was as if the darkness, I, knew and felt every fiber similar to a thick, dark, velvet mist.
I walked on, waiting for it to face me. There is more than one! I blinked and turned, I was surrounded and I felt them moving in. Automatically, my arm rouse and with it the hiss of a drawn sword. I didn't even try to be quiet and neither did they. Eerily, the wind stopped, making the growl and the sound of crunched leaves grow vivid and clear to the note.
The dark shadows cast by trees pressed down as if being weighted. I felt it on my shoulders and head constraining, a caliginous, stiffen warning. Why did they stop? Endless moments passed and with each moment the shadows grew more compressing, intent on squeezing every atom of space out of me. Painfully, I felt like a spring, tightening and tightening. What were they waiting for? I asked myself. What plan were they making? My eyes grew sharper as I waited in the darkness.
Silence.
I heard something move. Nothing yet. There was a sound of saliva dripping on the ground. They were eager but they hesitated. Why? One fiend spring up in the air behind me. Impulse acted alone as I spun around and slashed with a force I didn't even know I had.
I stood in awe of myself as I starred at the bloody heap that fell with a thump. It was overgrown wolf-like fiend who died quickly and didn't even whimper. A mysterious, confused emotion took a hold of me. It was pride, self-satisfaction, abhorrence, disgust and a certain fear that underlined all of that about what I was and did and was easily capable of being.
A monster.
I didn't even notice the rest of the pack leaving. Maybe I had earned their respect. They seemed to be in much awe and fear of myself as I was of me.
I looked at the rapier and realized its possibility—the possibility of ending life. Did I have that right? Maybe I did—I did defend myself and therefore had.
I scrutinized the blade, glazing at it hard. Did I want to be apart of blood—the soiled thing? No. No I didn't.
Did I have the right though? In defense, yes. But I admired the blade and how it killed, as if it possessed me. There was something wrong with this weapon and it's invisible stains of blood that was so clear to my eyes. So clear, I felt the screams of the slain ones. My mind shuddered yet I didn't see my hand that held the saber quiver.
I threw the rapier into the dirt. Immediately my headache and thirst came back with a pound. I followed the faint sound of a small stream. After I had taken my full I came back, cooked, and ate the meat of the fiend I had killed earlier. Feeling restless, I set off.
I never noticed the dark stone inlayed in the rapier and how that maniacal beat in the stone, 'kill, kill' slowed to a stop, lying in dormant, waiting for fate to lead another to it's curse of the Dark Dragoon as I looked at the sky and for the first realized the beauty of the tapestry of stars on that moonless night.
~Muslima