“They say she’s here…” The blazing glow gleamed in her eyes, highlighting her deep blue hair into a purple tone. She stared forebodingly as the fire burning beneath her crackled and flared around her armor and the glow from the fire melted into her crimson garb. The ridders, nervous and tense, all gathered around her to hear the story of the monster that destroyed Nionlah.
“Those yellow eyes… I’ll never forget them,” she paused and gulped the lump in her throat to catch herself from seeming weak in front of her soldiers. “I’m ready to make things right, now. I’m ready to kill the demon.” She took out a picture and showed it to her men. Her subordinates seemed confused as she pointed to a beautiful little girl with flowing brown hair and a pink bow. “Don’t be fooled. I’m sure she doesn’t look like this anymore, but this is the closest thing I have to help me remember the path of destruction she doled out on my home… and my best friend.” She looked up at the moon, saw the trees blowing in the wind, and recalled the tragedy that put her on this path and forever changed the lives of the residents of the peaceful forest village of Nionlah.
It was ten years ago when it happened. “There’s a demon in the village!” an elderly woman exclaimed as she ran for cover to the closest house. Nionlah possessed no capable fighters. The years of tranquility left the village weak and defenseless. There was no one there to defend it as the demon rampaged throughout, killing anything and everything in its path.
Emil remembered peeking out the door to her house when her dad called out to her. “Emil! Get inside, now!” He was attempting to board up the windows and she continued to watch as the village began to flood with blood contaminated water. Villagers were held in the air, trapped in bubbles of water, violently flailing their arms and legs attempting to escape the fate that awaited while the moisture from the air fueled the manifestation of liquid that would fill their lungs. Others were on the floor, spazzing out of control as water and blood drained from every orifice of their bodies creating a trail leading to the demon. Emil shed a tear, but continued to watch in horror as the corpses of people she had been bred to respect and love as family littered the ground. The trail led to her best friend’s house and she saw the seemingly innocent little girl running away from the scene, the bloody flood following. She witnessed her best friend’s father holding his boy in his arms, limp. The mother chased after the girl. “DEMON!” she screeched. A harrowing scream from the sorrow of losing a child.
Her dad pulled her inside and closed the door. They huddled and waited until the screams and sloshes of water hitting the door stopped. As Emil continued to stare into the dark abyss of this terrible night, all she could remember was the silhouette of the young girl fleeing from the village and the blood from the flooding waters slowly trailing behind her.
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When the chaos subsided and the morning sun revealed the aftermath of the massacre, the village was left stained with the blood of its citizens. The water had not washed away the waste of the tragic event, in fact, it seemed to linger and tarnish on anything that it touched. The villagers' attempts to scrub and clean the blemishes were in vain. No matter how hard they tried, the dark red blotches remained defiant of their effort.
Nionlah would never be the same. Some children were left orphans and they wept over the corpses of their fallen guardians leaving them crippled with shock. They were too scared to go back to school as rumors circulated that the massacre was done by a demon disguised as a child in the village. Emil witnessed her neighbors get slaughtered and felt guilty and powerless for watching their demise. In her own self penance, she felt it was her personal responsibility to help with the attempts at cleaning up and took care of the many orphans that remained in the village.
Men and women picked up swords, vowing to never allow something like this to ever fall upon their village again. They would soon seek the help of the Ridders, the protectors of Hasphal and expert demon hunters who adopted Nionlah as a recruiting town for more members. Emil, thirsty for revenge, would be first in line to join.
The village lost their prodigy, but she lost her best friend to a monster. He would never have a proper burial due to the stigma of being killed by a demon. She swore that nothing like that would happen again. She vowed to never rest until that demon was dead!
“What makes you think that’s the demon we’re looking for?” Emil heard through her daydreaming. She gritted her teeth and squinted her eyes, annoyed from being questioned by her insubordinates. “From the way they described this one, it has to be her.” She pulled out the briefing given to her group. Her eyes searched for understanding and solidarity within her crew, but instead she was met with distant stares and elusive gazes. She began to read it out loud. “Rare water based demon residing in the forbidden forest.” At the bottom of the page it read “ALIVE.” Emil chuckled. “Alive, they say.” She laughed hysterically. Her team all looked at each other nervously and then at her. They whispered to each other “I think she’s gone mad!”
Emil caught them looking at her with eyes of judgment. “Oh! You’ll believe me when you experience the pain yourselves.” She crawled from her dirt patch to one of her men. Her eyes widened with frustration and rage. “When you feel the pressure of the ocean caving in your lungs.” She looked back at another soldier. The glow from the blazing fire hit her face giving it a menacing look. “When the water in your body is drained and all that’s left is a dry mass of a kelt.“ She returned to sit at her spot and said “when those yellow eyes glow as your vision fades to black.” The men all had an uncomfortable, trepidatious body language. She calmed down a bit and they all had a long bout of silence. They asked to look at the image one more time so they’d know when they encountered the demon. An eerie wind began to blow in the stillness as one of the soldiers whispered to himself, “since when do demon’s look like men?”