To Soar With Vultures: Chapter One
The Goddess Of Life Is A Bitch Apparently
In the countryside of Itreyan, a great empire by any measure, stood an manor built just at the edge of a forest. Something about the trees seemed to loom over the estate, the trees casting shadow no matter where the sun sat in the sky. If the stone hewn fence that surrounded the property was any indication, what went on in the places the light never reached was not something to be spoken of by any honorable, god-fearing, life-loving man.
Rayla stood deep in the bowels of the caverns below. The dim light of torches placed every fifteen feet was barely enough to let her see the pickaxe in her hands and the cave wall inches from her face. She raised the pickaxe in her hands and pitched it forwards at the rock in front of her with a heaving blow. Fragments of stone chipped away, but the impact reverberated up her arm and didn’t help with the ache that grew in her bones.
Bad idea little girl! The voice in the back of her head hissed. Stay away! Some things were not meant to be touched.
On a good day, her only company was the Akkator. The cranky little bastard of a god resided in the deep hole where her soul should have been, right along with bits of daemons and a power darker than what radiated through the air of the caverns. Who cared that she’d sold that soul to the same old god so that she could draw her power from the tainted ground and puppet herself around like a living corpse with a body that never died? She certainly didn’t.
“Would you mind quieting down? I’d rather face whatever is beyond this wall than another round of Jvar’s torture when I don’t find it.”
The thing inside her bristled. Was calling it in a thing fair when it had a personality and a few scraps of power to call its own? Maybe not, but the alternative was to acknowledge that she shared her head space with an old, backwater god called death itself, so calling it a thing would do nicely.
Believe me, if that axe swings another time you’ll regret being born. No. You’ll regret not being able to die.
Rayla swung her pickaxe again. To hell with the Akkator’s warning. True or not, it could wait for the long walk through the pitch blackness back to the upper levels that waited for when the torches burnt themselves out as a signal. The shackles on her ankles and collar on her neck were good reminders that whatever she was made of, she was still just a prisoner, still nothing more than a darker sort of pet for a sadist to experiment on.
And nothing was going to stand in her way of getting out of them. Nothing would get in her way of getting out of this place, tracking down wherever Jvar had stashed her little brother, and finding a nice, quiet little nook to wait for the end of days.
When the steel met stone and chipped away through a surprisingly thin bit of rock, nothing happened, at least not at first. It took a moment , but once the sound of something scraping from the other side reached Rayla’s ears, it was like the world came crashing down upon her shoulders.
Suddenly, the faint moans of those long dead that she’d grown accustomed to were joined by a swirling cacophony of new screams. This, she could be prepared for. More screams meant more dead, but she’d straddled between life and death and survived in the in between for 14 long, long years.
She’d survive whatever this new threat was, even if it drove her to the edge of insanity.
What she wouldn’t give to be five years old again and sitting in a palace of splendor before it had all burnt up in ash and ruin…
Worse still, when she peered into the small crack that led to more darkness,something looked back. It’s eyes were an empty, milky white that stood out from it’s peeling onyx skin, which would be a visage so incomprehensibly unhuman if it weren’t for one simple fact.
She wasn't exactly human either. There was a time when she was, but that was before Jvar. That was before she'd been made into the black blooded, clawed, creature with a mouth of razor teeth and a tail chained to her legs that stood here.
Humanity was a nice sentiment to cling to though. Not that it was necessary.
“Let me out my darling…” the voice in the crack crooned, desperately trying to stretch a thin, bony finger through the slit in the rock. Its voice was raw yet smooth. Rayla watched as it ran a claw down the shimmer veil filling the crack. Watched as it ran a claw down the oh so fragile veil between this world and all that lay beyond. “Otherwise I’m sure your soul would taste divine.”
The voices of those dead were screaming in warning that whatever lay beyond that veil should never cross it.
The broken sound of Rayla’s laughter filled the empty tunnel. Whatever that thing was, it was not all knowing, or it would have known one very ugly truth- Rayla Asarova had sold her soul long ago.
The body that simply brushed off death was absolutely worth the power it'd cost her.
The torch struggling to illuminate the catacomb finally sputtered out, signaling that after ten hours mining away at rock and going nowhere, Rayla was free to wander back up through the pitch darkness and rejoin the so-called land of the living.
She took one last glance at the crack. Her eyes, made for darkness, adjusted quickly. Something nasty was oozing out from it, just like a wound gushing blood. On a whim, Rayla waved farewell to that particular nightmare before starting back out of the mine.
“Made another time,” she called back to the thing in the darkness. Could it hear her?
The chill in her bones told her that she didn’t want to know.
Please don’t play games with her. I’ve heard she’s quite the bitch.
A soft chuckle escaped her lips. “If that ends up being the understatement of the century I’m going to kill you.” The words felt raw on her tongue. Spoken words from her were rare. It was better that way. If she was silent she’d never beg, never plead, and never humiliate herself.
But most importantly, if she never said anything, it meant there was something she could still control. It meant she could never betray her true intentions to anyone she didn’t trust. Jvar had learned to like her silent, to have a whore of a mutt who watched with glassy eyes with nothing going on upstairs. That was all she was, a perfect picture of whatever her enemies wanted to see.
Rayla knew the way back out of the mines so well that she let her mind drift off to the sound of her pickaxe scraping against the ground. Was the sound a risk? Yes. The daemons were always listening, and for most, an encounter with a hungry one meant death.
But Rayla Asarova could not die. So she walked on until she reached the gates.
She wordlessly handed her pickaxe off to a guard and stumbled into the searing, artificial light.
“Long time, no see,” It was another prisoner who spoke. He hovered at the edge of the crowd waiting to watch for the gate to be sealed shut. Just like her, they were all in shackles with collars around their necks. “Was really hoping you wouldn’t make it out this time.”
She drifted her gaze to meet his eyes. They were the same deep navy as his hair, but she knew that even though he loved to deny it, those eyes could cloud over into black pits. Just like hers did.
Go on! Say it. Rasaj, why don’t you drop dead? I heard Hel is particularly nice this time of year! Prick.
She said nothing, but she didn’t hesitate to part her black lips into a sneer. In her opinion, Rasaj needed a glimpse of those razor sharp teeth. Maybe he’d learn that she was with him in the highest security part of the asylum for suspiciously bloody reason.
Besides, the Akkator was playing. No matter what old rumors said, dead people didn’t come back as the daemons of the beyond. No dead person she had ever heard ever mentioned the Hel beyond or daemons.
Not true. Some of them were killed by daemons and still weren’t over it.
Rasaj stepped over to her and shoved a hand against her chest. She stumbled back a step and then caught her balance to the tune of his laughter. “Do you think Jvar would care if I offed his whore when nobody was looking?”
Jvar’s whore. What a shit nickname. When he'd first dragged her in front of everyone, a new introduction after all the time in near solitude, he'd called her the halival. The reaper.
But whore was the only thing that ever stuck. That was good, in a way. When the world thought she was just an empty eyed doll, a whore for a sadist, that meant they wouldn't be watching. They'd underestimate her, and there was power in that.
Nobody would suspect she played the long game. Nobody would suspect her when bodies started dropping.
It really took everything to remind herself that Rasaj was not the enemy, just an asshole, and that his russet brown skin was speckled with scars just like her.
They could both thank one sadist in particular. Jvar Vetrecini.
On an impulse, Rayla reached out a hand and dragged a clawed fingertip lightly across his throat, right above the collar. She didn’t press enough to actually draw blood, just enough to remind him that she was not harmless.
Rasaj jerked back, nearly knocking someone else over. Rayla couldn’t hold back a thin smile. There wasn’t a mirror, but with her wicked blood red eyes, deathly pale skin, and sharp smile, Rayla imagined that to Rasaj, she looked like a particularly vengeful ghost. It was a good visual.
And sometimes, when the seething craving for blood inside her that came from the daemons bubbled up, her eyes would go black. She didn't lose control, she'd practiced to hold onto it where others had failed. Jvar expected a feral animal. Jvar expected a broken doll. She'd be nothing more. She'd be nothing less. She'd be nothing else.
Otherwise she had her mother’s crimson eyes.
Before Rasaj could find a way to retaliate, a familiar, booming voice cut through the air.
Jvar Vetrecini was standing on his pedestal. “I have an announcement to make!” She had to admit, he had guts to stand in front of the people he quite literally tore to shred for fun and speak with a smile. Rasaj nudged Rayla’s arm.
“You know about this?” he spat.
Rayla didn’t even bother looking Rasaj in the eye, even as he turned to stand beside her and lean up against her shoulder. Of course she didn’t know.
“To be fair, I have a few announcements, but you guys don’t have anywhere to be,” Jvar said with a laugh and a smile that didn’t reach his opal eyes. “First order of business- fresh meat!”
He gestured to the tall girl who stood at his side. On some level, they looked the same. They had the same coppery brown skin and slender face, with eyes that actually seemed to shine like jewels, even from afar.
“This is Katara. Nothing too special, but here she is,” Jvar shoved her off the platform, leaving her to face plant on hard ground. Rayla winced a bit.Katara didn’t have it bad as far as “introductions” went, but the sinking feeling of having to crawl to your feet while bound in chains wasn’t pleasant.
Rayla watched someone help Katara to her feet as the crowd clapped and scowled. She remembered standing on the pedestal in a straitjacket with a muzzle on her face. She remembered when Jvar announced her as the Halival and brushed off what she did under the guise that she was lucky enough to be his weapon one day.
4 years was a long time, but not long enough to make Rayla forget what it felt like to be left to scramble off the ground alone while a few brave souls tried to crush her under their feet.
That was her life though. 5 years of getting to be a kid before getting dragged off to Jvar and filled with horrors. 10 years in his side prison being tortured before snapping and showing the guards that she was no child, just a wolf in sheep's clothing. 4 years here, in the asylum that Jvar personally oversaw.
14 years without talking to another person if anyone was counting.
“Second order of business- I’ve heard news from a...classified source that someone discovered a very special...something down in the mines,” Jvar paused for a moment, craning his neck to look around as if he could see into the soul of whoever found what he wanted. Every muscle in Rayla’s body tensed.
How in the Akkator’s name did he know?
Jvar stopped his dramatic looking around. “So whoever did so is going to come forward and describe exactly what they found and where they found it,” For once, Rayla hung on every word like the body of a criminal hung from a noose. He should not know what she found. She didn’t understand why, but something told her that Jvar shouldn’t learn about the thing down below that wanted to devour her soul. “Or there are going to be some nasty consequences that I would love to see come to fruition.”
You're right. Somehow, the Akkator managed to whisper despite being just a voice in Rayla’s head. He should not find what you found. And I would stop calling her an it. She has a name- Mor, goddess of life, and Queen of Daemons and the dark Hel beyond.
Rayla closed her eyes and sighed. There was something fucked about this place. There was something fucked about this world, and there was something fucked about the world beyond too.
Fine. She'd known that for awhile now. It wasn't like it would change.
