Backstory Part 1
We were born to be weapons. Emotionless killing machines. To complete the mission at all costs was our purpose. Walking the path of slaughter while hearing pleads of mercy and forgiveness. Men, women, children and even the elderly. No one was an exception. If our employers want you dead at midnight, not even God himself will let you see the morning sun.
In the beginning, there were 5000 of us. When we all turned 3 years old, we were injected with a strange medicine into our spines. It was to enhance our reaction speed, our processing speed, and to absorb information faster and to increase our memory so we won't forget anything. 3500 kids survived the injection.
We started learning languages firstly. Elven, Fae, Human and the Orc language. We quickly mastered the languages in 2 years, and those who didn't, we never saw those brothers and sisters again. We moved on to learning lethal techniques which involved killing, crippling, torturing and how to capture someone without being noticed.
As we were learning, we would exercise, sprinting, lifting and climbing. We could feel ourselves getting stronger and started competing against one another. Rivalry started among us, creating factions, using each other to continue our growth, still not understanding why we were learning these things but we were just children.
3 years passed by in a flash. We were now 8 years old, we lost even more brothers and sisters, either by accident from practicing our techniques on each other, to master parrying and counter attacking, our fathers thought that we must learn from observation, if 1 of us died, the rest of us learn that 1 mistake while using our swords can suck the life of us. There are now 3000 of us. We were used to losing our family and didn't feel the need to mourn for their deaths, we were just feeling colder.
We thought to just stop fighting each other, we lost too many brothers and sisters to continue. Those who spoke up were missing the next day. We were forced by fear to continue honing our skills and continued to learn new skills such as killing intent, stealth and trap making. We also learnt how to inflict fear into the enemies by brutalising one death, to make it seem savage and easy. We thought we were going to finish our training and learning, to find out our purpose and why we learnt everything till then. We turned 9 years old and we found out that the exercising we were doing every day for 6 years wasn't to keep us healthy and to make friends. How wrong we were. It was the preparation for the second douse of the strange medicine.
Our numbers. My brothers and sisters. My family. From the 2800 we had, 400 survived the treatment. We learnt that even if we die, our fathers in the the white cloaks wouldn't care. We learnt what true heartbreak was and for the first time in 1 year, I cried.
The second treatment was to make our bodies keep up with our minds, making us stronger, faster and more dangerous. We knew what we could lose and how fast it could be to lose ourselves from the madness that came with the feeling to destroy anything. We just had to bury our emotions and move on to the next step of training.
4 year go passed ever so slow. We are now 13 years old and with only 300 moving on to the next stage of training. We were lead into a hall way, we were carrying the weapons we were most comfortable with and on the walls to the side of us, we saw our first people besides our white cloaked fathers. They were bulk and had different appearances separating them into their respected races. The Elves wore a dark green tunic with shortened sleeves that looked like they were stretching with long green pants.The Orcs wore black armour tightly fitted to display the power of their muscles. The Fae were separated to those who used magic and those who didn't. The magic users were beautiful looking in their nature armour which looked like wood vines that's been weaved together and with some vines flowering. The Fae that didn't use magic looked like the brutes dragged up from hell, wearing war torn battle armour but it still covered up their vital areas. I noticed that they all wore the same collar and they were pointing their bows and magical staffs at us, all on alert incase something happened.
As we walked in silence with the feeling of excitement in the air from seeing so many strange people. We were lead into a massive room, filled with darkness. We were told to wait in the darkness. What happened next was the 1 thing in my life that I will never forget.
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Screams of horror pierced through the darkness. The lights flashed on and dread filled everyone's confused faces. What we saw was our family. Our siblings. Brothers and sisters. But it wasn't from the 300 of us that survived the nightmare training, no, it was much worse. It was the 4700 others, we found out what they did to the bodies of those that 'died' or went 'missing'. They were alive but very much dead. Almost as if they were brought back to life and are being driven by madness. As my heart was rapidly beating, an aged croaky voice sounded through the room.
"Let the naming ceremony begin, only 10 of the 300 survivors will leave alive. Good luck and let the beast out to play".
I nodded to the people closest to me and we knew that if we were going to live, we need to work together. I readied my pitch black katana and charged over to those who were once my family, slaughtering my way through.
They were everywhere, I couldn't be hesitant. 1 wrong move and I would've died. Just had to move faster and be stronger. I was having flash backs to when my brothers and sisters trained together, the way they smiled, the way they laughed. It only solidified my cold heart, them now are not the ones I knew. By the time I had a pile of corpses by my side, I noticed that I was alone. I didn't see any of the people I nodded to. I thought they must've died but I didn't care too much, I just knew I needed to regroup with the remaining survivors. I slaughtered a path from where I though was where I came from.
I've been looking for everyone else for the last 30minutes but I didn't hear any fighting noises from my surroundings besides the beastly shouts from my dead family. Thinking back to the voice, there still must be 9 at least left. So my search continued.
1 hour...
2hours....
5hours...
9hours...
The number of siblings I've cut down, I've lost count. I still haven't found my alive family and I'm starting to grow tired. The adrenalin has started to wear off and my injuries are worsening, at least the numbers are dwindling and my tower of corpses is ever growing rapidly. I was starting to lose hope, but then hope sounded in my ears, the voice of the elder that spoke before.
"10 survivors left, escape with your lives or finish of your previous siblings, your choice".
I'm faced with a new choice. 1 that assures that I completed the mission or 1 that hones my skills and letting more of my family continue their way to the afterlife while showing my fathers to leave no witnesses. It was an easy choice, this was my goodbye that I never got the chance to say. I may be not feeling any emotions, but I felt that they deserve that much.
I continue to slaughter while training my dodging speed, leaving as little of space between me and the attack, to feel the wind coming off their fists and palms on every attack. I was calm and steady. I found that dodging at the last second while using minimal movements was hard but worth mastering because it doesn't make any unless movements. By making minimal movement to dodge a lethal attack allows you to pick up habits from the enemy, finding out wounded areas by watching their shoulders flinch after they extend too far forward.
While paying attention to my surroundings and my blade cutting down on anyone I faced, I suddenly felt something inside me tremble. I opened up some space by spinning my blade in a full circle, than sprinted to a direction where I saw an opening. I found out that making some distance was a lot harder than I thought with an endless barrage of attacks aiming for my throat and my legs. I jumped and kicked one in the face and as he fell back, I got a footing on his face and jump on top of the closest person. My sister stumbled back as I jumped to the next person and continued to run on top of the swarm of people. Like that I was able to see the number of enemies left, a cold sweat ran down my back. Then I felt the tremor again, I felt it come from the middle of my chest. I lower my shirt a little and a dim red light was showing from my chest I looked up towards the number of enemies I have left and felt my face and body get hotter I was feeling strange. I felt like hurting someone I don't know why but the more people I kill, the hotter I was getting. Then something happened. I heard a loud snap and a growl yelling things I couldn't understand.
Darkness. It was every where and I appeared to be floating in just darkness. I figured that it would be a good time to investigate that red light and to brighten up this darkness with the red light. I pulled my shirt down and the red light was pulsing and with every pulse, the red light spread to other parts of my body. I didn't panic because it felt very comfortable. So comfortable that I could just sleep. My exhausted body gently floating down touching something wet, I opened my eyes to see that it was a liquid similar to blood. Crimson water that reflected an appearance I'm not used to and made me jump back. I was relieved to see the reflection jump back as well. If it didn't, I'd be more terrified. I'm observing the person I see, dead eyes with a hint of loneliness, a pitch black katana, red colouring in his eyes with long hair covering a part of his face. He wore a black long sleeve shirt with bulging muscles full of power showing through the shirt. He copied my movement then I realised, this lonely figure wearing my clothes was me.