The thing about dying is that it is intense, personal, and beyond anyone's control—it's an experience beyond human comprehension and impossible to describe. The first thing she registered was the stench of her shit and the strong essence of physical sensation. She could see for the first time that the god-awful noise from the light-skinned-toned giants was deafening. It was high-pitched, like a blood-curdling scream, as if pain killers had not been invented yet, a sort of scream.
The commotion died down, and after being exchanged by one titan pair of hands to another, one cooing sound later, she finished the puzzle—she had been reborn.
Although this life had not been kind to her, she had been used to that from her last life.
The only difference is that she wasn't working a miserable job and living paycheck to paycheck; she grew up in a whore house, or what they called a brothel. Her birth was not supposed to happen, but destiny had a different idea. When a prostitute found out they were pregnant, they aborted because having a child could damage their reputation by making them no longer valuable. Children of whores are often ostracised or sent to the streets to fend for themselves at a certain age. Luckily, Nolani looked exactly like her mother, one of the best workers in the brothel. From a young age, she had been training to become like her mother.
Training to become someone like her mother isn't something she wanted, but it seemed to be her only option in life. Women didn't have many opportunities besides selling their bodies or forging an alliance with another kingdom through marriage. Nolani wasn't of noble blood, so she was forced to stick with the latter of the two.
Nolani was a nightmare and a peculiar figure in the making. At nine months, she started walking without anyone taking notice. It wasn't until she taught herself something that the brothel owner decided she was worth something. A year later, she is trying to make out words spoken in the common tongue, a language very different from what she was used to, but she is determined. While repeating the syllables of the sentences of those around her, she started comparing those sounds with items to make out whole words.
At eighteen months, Nolani grows bored and decides to venture out of her room—a stuffy old storage room with the wooden crib she used to sleep in before she started walking. Nobody checked on her except when it was time to eat or change her cloth diaper. Growing tired of sitting in her shit, she potty trains herself with one of the chamber pots nobody used—if nobody invents running water by the time she is five, she is going to chuck her chamber pot at a scientist until they do.
(It is the second time she leaves the room; she discovers she lives in a brothel—imagine how she worked that one out.)
The day someone comes in and finds a pile of shit and piss in the middle of the room rather than a diaper, the brothel owner takes an interest in her. Questions like 'How did you learn this or that?' were asked. Nolani tried her best to respond in one-word syllables because forming sentences was out of the question until the brothel owner formally assigned someone to care for her. She questioned if the workers and owner were going to let her rot in that storage room until she died or was old enough to be sold to someone. What would have become of her if she had not caught the owner's interest?
When Nolani is three, she starts talking to other people, showing her intelligence. She still did not know how to read or write because, in those days, women didn't need to. From a young age, the brothel owner, another woman living off the richest of her workers, told her there were only a few things a woman should know—how to manipulate a man's ego, how to coax him into wanting to come back to the brothel, and how to dry out his coin sachel. It's about turning a man from riches to rags, because that's how a woman is expected to make a living in these domains.
The brothel owner started her lessons early because she saw Nolani as part of her future retirement plan. Whatever floats the old coot's boat, because Nolani wants to survive. Out in the streets, hell was waiting to consume her. She had heard rumors of monsters appearing. Hearing the horror stories, Nolani refused to believe them. Those rumors were simply bedtime stories to scare the children into going to sleep.
That was how her second life began—no parental bonds or an inevitable future to think of. Nolani was okay with sacrificing the need for a parental figure for a place to live.
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Nothing notable in her life would happen until she got a little older and prettier. Nolani was eight when the brothel owner told her to run an errand that would challenge her old life's morals and awaken a certain urge deep within the depths of her reincarnated soul.
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There's a specific timeframe where men sought out the whores. Typically, it was between sundown and the beginning of the night. Nolani didn't know that, though; she had spent most of her life inside the brothel, either learning how to stroke a man's ego or cleaning up the rooms used that night. Walking along the stone pathways of the city, she aimlessly gets lost in the hours of the night. The street lamps had been lit, but the oil inside died as time passed.
Flear started to bleed inside her system as the drunks started creeping out from their drunken headquarters. She seethed a breath straight through her teeth. It was dark, not horridly dark, but dim. Few street lamps were lit during this time. The only light came from homes or bars. Her sixth sense is drowning her with anxiety.
Her pale brown eyes peered in every direction, trying to locate the correct way through her panicked mind. Everything seemed surreal and a blur to her because she had not seen the atrocities she passed by. She expected that kind of behavior, but seeing it was something different.
In one corner, she saw a woman standing outside her home, giving her a sinister wave of good luck. In another, a man in a knight's uniform explored himself in another's mouth. Across from that, there was a lucid gaze from a young boy like her being dragged into the dark path of an alley. Gulping, she forced herself to turn her head.
A cold, loathing expression sneered across her face—guilt, sorrow, and hatred for the wolves in this defiled city.
Nolani keeps walking. She is only eight.
Time begins to slow down as talon hands snatch her arm, proceeding to drag her into an alley. She tries to run, but the calloused hand is too tight around her forearm. Brown eyes look up at the nameless assaulter, gazing into his soul-snatching blue ones and muffled curly brown hair, mahogany-colored, a shade paler than hers. His hair was charmingly tousled, but would have been considered handsome in another time and place. Now, all she can see is a nameless assailant fueling her unease.
"You're a pretty thing; who do you work for?"
She bites her lip. His words plunge a deep hatred in her for him.
"I'm not for sale," Nolani spits out coldly.
Laughing, he runs a finger on the right side of her chin. Brown eyes glare at that finger, imagining it between her teeth as she bites it. Her spine stiffens as his glimmering, ocean-blue eyes darken with a predatory gaze on her. Plans run through her head like a train. She imagines her foot digging into his mouth and a scenario where she is stabbing him with a sword that appears out of thin air. It's the only thing keeping her from breaking down. What could she do in the body of a child? Absolutely fucking nothing, but that means she wouldn't try to save herself.
Her guts sink to the ground as if she were on the drop of a rollercoaster the moment he pulls her deeper into the alley. She kicks and screams as the dimly lit streets disappear. Then she bites the man's hand, encircling her wrist. He swings her into the brick wall of a building in relation. Her back throbbed as a nasty bruise began to form.
"Fuck, that hurt!"
Good. Tears began to flow down Nolani's cheeks as he forcibly pressed their bodies together as if they were in a warm hug. His hand began to drift from her back down to the back of her dress as he lifted it to feel her underwear. No matter how hard her struggles came, it seemed to feed his disgusting ego. Her body is lifted from behind as his leg travels between her thighs. Her arms are smashed between their chests as her head rests on his shoulder. She felt the heated breath from his mouth ghost down her neck, sending shivers down her spine.
The world seemed to freeze when she saw the side of his neck—bitebitebitebiteBITEIT. No matter how strong someone was, the neck was a vulnerable spot.
She realized that this might be her only chance to escape. Morality be damned.
Her mouth opens with a wide crack, and then she clamps down hard. Flesh sinks beneath her teeth as blood draws into her mouth. Through her panting breath, bubbles of blood pop, splattering blood onto her face. She felt his hand dive into her hair, pulling strands out for her to let go of his neck, but she refused. Her teeth are like hooks, searing into the mouth of the fish. His pained grunts feel like music to her ears, but it's not enough.
Until the man turned into a screaming fit, she began to creep her fingers through the wound, opening it as far as she could through the strength the high adrenaline gave her. They wrapped around the edge of his neck wound and began to rip the flesh apart. A river of blood began to pour down her fragile, sewn dress. His hand sank from her hair to the sides of his hips. She felt his body lurch backward, and even as he went unconscious from the pain. Still, she didn't stop.
Her mind thought of the girl from earlier—she used that memory to keep tearing. His body hit the ground as she released her victim with a glob of flesh and blood in her mouth. She spat it out and cracked her jaw open. Then she shook her head back and forth like a rabid dog to shear another chunk off from the other side of his neck. She repeated the same procedure to sink her fingers into the wound. She would make sure he would bleed enough to die—in her mind, she was taking out the trash.
Nolani spat out more flesh from the second bite, panting like an animal as she straddled his chest and wiped a hand across her mouth. She looked at the blood on the back of her hand, strangely proud of herself. Killing someone was certainly not something she liked to do, but here, it's survival of the fittest. Since people wanted to mind their own business, they got this.
At least nobody would bother her on her way home with her current appearance. It's sad to think she would have to have blood on her to keep the predators away, but so be it. Fuck the morals, fuck this life, and fuck this world. If she wanted to survive, she would have to throw out the laws of her old life.
Now, she was high on the law of survival. Deep down, something feral was beginning to grow from the hatred she had for this life. Everything she experienced had been vented into killing that man.
With her shaking legs, she got off the man's body and gave him an animalistic growl before leaving him.
She ignored the gazes of the adults. Most were too busy even to notice.
But at least she was safe.
(She wasn't the only one watching her that night.)
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Vesemiri is a witcher from the School of the Wolf. On a mission, his journey had been cut short when he came across the mutilated scream of a man. Curiously, he went to check it out.
He couldn't believe his eyes or stop the stifling laughter from his throat. A tiny ass girl was biting the shit out of a man ten times her size. At that moment, his mind flashed back to the conversation about creating female witchers. The Trial of Grasses was designed for male biology. Throughout the years of experimentation, nobody thought of bringing back a female because nobody seemed to have the same mentality as the Witchers or be ambitious. Most of the females he met dreamed of marriage and love because that's how they had been raised to think, and boys dreamed of heroism and knighthood.
He couldn't put his finger on what was so different about this girl. There was a magical resonance within her soul that set her apart from the rest of the humans. It felt like destiny was pointing him towards this child, urging him to take her in and tame the darkening urge growing within her.
However, something seemed different about this one. She is driven to survive, defying the plan destiny has for her. No normal child would think to bite the neck of a man when getting assaulted.
The girl got up off the man, a swarthy glint cussing in her eyes as she spat on his corpse before leaving the scene.
What a sight to behold. Maybe, just maybe, she might be the one to survive the trial of grasses. She was clearly cut from the rest, more suited for a morbid lifestyle. After this particular ordeal, he felt that if he didn't take this girl in, she would grow into a deadly machine, an untamed beast destined to slaughter everything in her path.
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Nolani fails to notice the presence stalking her, who swiftly knocks her out with a hit to the back of her neck. It wasn't until dawn the next day that she discovered she was being carried on a man's shoulder. Instead of bitching about her situation, she promptly fell back asleep because at this point, she didn't give a shit what this world had planned for her, she would claw out the eyes of those who got in her way.
(She dreamed of bathing in the blood of her mother, and skinned the man who assaulted her.)
A wicked smile plastered her face in the midst of her sleep. Because fuck destiny and the monsters that came with it.