She walked across the burning ash, bright embers dancing in her hair. The courtyard of the Monastery of the Sacred Eye was aflame. Broken windows belched gouts of flame, and black smoke blanketed the sky. The heat of the flames, the glow of the fire—it made her heart race, made her infused blood race through her veins. She ran bare fingers through her scarlet hair, and smiled.

“Anarra… vile bitch. I’ll see you dead for this,” shouted the silhouette of a man, blade and shield drawn, on the far end of the courtyard.

Vile bitch, she thought. I like that.

The main roared, and charged across the charred courtyard. Sweat ran down his furious brow. She knew the man; Ser Merros, one of the many fledgling knights stationed at the monastery.

“You won’t live to see the dawn, Ser Merros,” she said, her red lips curled in a sinister smile. Motes of violet energy swirled along the length of her arm, and quickened, until they grew hot with burning red magic.

“Silence!” he shouted.

She whipped her arm forward, and a riotous bolt of energy blasted the man square in the chest. His boots dug trenches in the burnt grown as he clenched his jaw. She fired another furious bolt, and he snapped his shield forward; it exploded in a burst of broken wood and charred metal.

“Scarlet-haired whore!”

Anarra smiled again. “Now that, I rather do quite like.”

Ser Merros spat on the ground. “The priests should have smothered you in the crib.”

A scowl erupted across her face. She fired another trio of scorching bolts. The first struck his arm, disarming the knight. The second struck his stomach, scorching the tabard he wore, burning the scale armor he wore under. The next struck along his knees, bringing him down upon them.

The man lingered there, blood trickling down his jaw, his eyes blurry with pain. Anarra walked to him, one leg before the other, her stride brimming with arrogance. She blew upon the tips of her fingers, as if to cool them down.

“You will be hunted,” Ser Merros said. “By better men than me.”

She shrugged. “Better that then prison I was doomed to.”

“You deserve your bars.”

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“I am a sinful harlot, aren’t I? Guilty of sins yet committed.”

“Repent, bitch.”

She laughed at his words, standing mere feet before him. She wagged her finger at him, as if scolding a misbehaving child. “You should not talk that way to your betters.”

“You are not—”

Another blast struck his chest, slamming him onto his back. He groaned, writhing upon the hot cinders. The monastery continued to burn around him, timbers catching quick, embers dancing into the midnight sky. In the distance, he could hear screaming.

“Oh, but I am better than you,” she said. She walked to his side, staring down at him with disgust. “I deserve so much from this world. And I will take it, until I am satisfied. You knights and you priests, you feared what I was—perhaps you were right to fear the promise within my blood. But rest assured. For the pains you have shown me, the pain I will inflict upon this world will be legendary. I won’t rest until each and every soul has been dominated.”

The knight’s eyes grew wild with fear, but it was not to last. She brought her boot down on his face, slowly crushing his features. He groaned, grabbing at her leg, trying to shove her off of him. But she did not relent; she ground, and ground that boot down against his face.

“Mmm, maggot,” she taunted, wetting her lips as she pressed down harder and harder, grinding her boot down against his face. Once more, he groaned, and sputtered, and soon his voice broke into moans of pain. His arms fell to the wayside, and he took her abuse without resistance. Still pinning his face with her foot, she aimed her hand towards his chest. The magic shuddered alive along her arm, and a scorching blast punched clean through his chest, leaving a bloody, burning hole in the ground.

She stared into his lifeless eyes, watching his jaw twitch a few final times until he stopped moving. She knelt, and rifled through his pouches and belongings, finding his belt rather fetching—to say nothing of the coin. “I do want to wear a pretty dress for once in my life,” she said, the coins in the palm of her hand, thumbing over them.

She drew her cloak tight around herself, and walked through the courtyard, towards the gates of the monastery. They were a burnt-out skeleton of their former selves, the iron supports warped from the heat of the flames. Anarra stepped through the ruined gates, stepping over fallen timbers, ash dancing about her heels.

Anarra walked down the hard-packed road leading away from the flaming ruins, turning back to face the former Monastery of the Sacred Eye. This had been her ‘home’ for her entire life, the only walls she knew, her prison of manuscripts and commandments. She did not truly know what sin she committed as a child, nor who her parents were, nor for what she was being punished for. But she knew veins glowed with the heat of magic, some heritage she knew not of. The priesthood of the monastery would not kill her, but they would not let her be free, either. Perhaps, long ago, their intentions were pure.

But they had twisted into a seething hate. It had started small—the sisters of the monastery pulling hard upon her hair or arms, twisting wrists, crushing fingers. The whips came when she was a young woman, and soon after, imprisonment in the dark, dank corners of the monastery’s lower cells. Confusion gave way to hot rage, and hot rage gave way to a burning need for vengeance.

Anarra Deimos breathed in the hot, flame-licked air. She shivered; it felt good. It felt pure. It felt right. She smiled, and walked her path to freedom.