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She’d never really known justice.
She’d been born into a farming family near Sestra, one of eight brothers and sisters. Her life was simple, though fraught with the normal stresses and strains of farming life. A ninth sibling, another brother, was born into the family, but the birth had been long and difficult, within the hour there were only eight again.
She had her first proper kiss just shy of her sixteenth birthday, with a boy she thought she’d love forever. She'd changed her mind within a week. Seven months later she fell in love for the first and only time.
At the harvest dance, when her parents were full of wine and deeply asleep, she stole from her bed and out of the house, taking with her all of the family’s savings. She met her lover, and together they fled to make themselves a better life away from the monotony of farming.
In Sundren City, her heart was broken. The man she loved beat the money from her, telling her the Legion would see her hang for theft if she reported him. He took all but two stags, and left her bloodied on the floor. She swore she would never love again.
Alone, penniless and terrified, she earned money as best she could. As the weeks and months passed she learned to turn the tears and sobs into moans that her customers might take for pleasure. Every night she planned to save enough to replace the money she had stolen, but every night she drank away the coin and prayed to forget.
She was almost unrecognisable when she learned she could never go home. Her eyes had lost all their life, hemmed in as they were by dark and weary bags, her cheeks were sunken and her body thin. She could barely summon tears as she heard that Sestra had fallen to the lizards and that her home had burned. She drank herself unconscious every morning for a week.
Stories of the Wart penetrated her drunken state, stories of those who’d made it away from the lizard invasion. For the first time since the harvest festival she let herself have hope. She planned to visit Mirakus, and from there onto the port and away from the land that seemed to curse her.
She never made it to the gates. The city was awash with refugees. Tired and desperate people full of concern for nothing but their own survival, the city was too engrossed in its own problems to hear her screams.
When the gang was done, they smashed in her skull with a rock.
She was buried in a mass grave, a dusting of quicklime served as her shroud. She left nothing behind but some bawdy tales of a pitiful whore, and an alley touched by her hate and fear.
She’d been born into a farming family near Sestra, one of eight brothers and sisters. Her life was simple, though fraught with the normal stresses and strains of farming life. A ninth sibling, another brother, was born into the family, but the birth had been long and difficult, within the hour there were only eight again.
She had her first proper kiss just shy of her sixteenth birthday, with a boy she thought she’d love forever. She'd changed her mind within a week. Seven months later she fell in love for the first and only time.
At the harvest dance, when her parents were full of wine and deeply asleep, she stole from her bed and out of the house, taking with her all of the family’s savings. She met her lover, and together they fled to make themselves a better life away from the monotony of farming.
In Sundren City, her heart was broken. The man she loved beat the money from her, telling her the Legion would see her hang for theft if she reported him. He took all but two stags, and left her bloodied on the floor. She swore she would never love again.
Alone, penniless and terrified, she earned money as best she could. As the weeks and months passed she learned to turn the tears and sobs into moans that her customers might take for pleasure. Every night she planned to save enough to replace the money she had stolen, but every night she drank away the coin and prayed to forget.
She was almost unrecognisable when she learned she could never go home. Her eyes had lost all their life, hemmed in as they were by dark and weary bags, her cheeks were sunken and her body thin. She could barely summon tears as she heard that Sestra had fallen to the lizards and that her home had burned. She drank herself unconscious every morning for a week.
Stories of the Wart penetrated her drunken state, stories of those who’d made it away from the lizard invasion. For the first time since the harvest festival she let herself have hope. She planned to visit Mirakus, and from there onto the port and away from the land that seemed to curse her.
She never made it to the gates. The city was awash with refugees. Tired and desperate people full of concern for nothing but their own survival, the city was too engrossed in its own problems to hear her screams.
When the gang was done, they smashed in her skull with a rock.
She was buried in a mass grave, a dusting of quicklime served as her shroud. She left nothing behind but some bawdy tales of a pitiful whore, and an alley touched by her hate and fear.
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