Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Blood and Ashes

Written a good two years ago in a classroom journal.


Black hair naturally streaked with silver was now streaked with scarlet, brown, sweat and rain. The eyes were pupil-less, one completely black and the other completely white. Such eyes blinked back tears of pain and sorrow for the uncountable time that day as the rain poured down in sheets, dark and cold. Huge wings that were once white were now mangled and stained red with blood. Blood that dripped onto the already stained, water and blood saturated ground. White pants were ripped and stained while a black tunic was ripped nearly to shreds, almost to the point of indecency even for this day and age.

And all that blood.

Blood that was hers, mixed with the blood of those she had slain, and those she knew that had been slain. They lay all around her in all manner of horrific states of death and pain. Decapitated, run through, half gone, only heads, all bloody and soaked and gone. Human, demon, half-breed, full breed, sprite, elf, fae, it didn’t matter. And all that blood that still steamed in the cold darkness of this nightmarish horror.

Her hands were stained with all that blood.

Again she blinked. Grey pupils returned to her watery eyes as she collapsed to ground clutching at her chest. Silently, hot tears fell from her eyes in torrents as the rain continued to fall around her. Her heart was finally aloud to give out.

The guardian was dead, her duty done.

Centuries later the same young woman was doing things fit for a horror story. In the daylight hours, she looked human. She was normal, did the things humans did and had friends and a job. But at night when her real job began she changed. Keeping the modern clothing, her white wings grew forth from her back, her ears grew elongated and pointed and she grew claws and cat-like canines and skills. Her eyes had always been the same however…since she had been born.

The left one black, the right one white both adorned with gray pupils.

White wings, feathery and gleaming spread forth from her back in a dramatic and intimidating fashion, if one were watching, as a long sword is forced out of her palm. Her prey growls and flexes sharp claws, long and already dripping with blood from its first and soon to be last human victim. The young woman shakes her head sadly and takes a fighting stance known well by her opponents. It is a stance for defense that she has taken many a night before this one, and she will take many a night after.

“Blessed be in death.” She whispers, making the sign of a pentagram with the small prayer as the creature charged her, letting out an enraged snarl. She swept the sword down so quickly that a human would never have seen it move and the creature was then lying on the ground in two separate halves in a puddle of its own blood. She sighed. What a job eh? As she was about to set the body aflame, a shriek of terror that had obviously been held ran out and she whirled around ready to strike the intruder down.

A shriek of terror from a late night passerby. She’d been seen… dear gods she’d been seen! “Oh crud…” The young brunette whispered as she turned.

And then she stopped.

The sword clattered to the damp pavement. Two hands were brought up over two mouths in shocked horror. Two minds thought the exact same thing at the exact same moment. “No, it can’t be…”

But it was.

“A – Alex?” The blonde streaked brunette choked out hesitantly. Her eyes stared out into the blood and moonlight drenched corridor in disbelief.

“Yes Kira, it’s me.” Came the sullen reply to a best friend, from a best friend.

Now Alex and Kira sat across from each other on the damp pavement. It was a shocked and awkward silence to say the least.

“Alex…what are you? Who are you??” Kira finally uttered. The hurt and betrayal in her voice was shining in her bright green eyes.

Alex sighed deeply and stood up, followed by Kira who waited patiently. The brunette with the pointed ears fluffed her wings out a few times in agitation and sighed again. “Half angel, half demon and hated by half the races, loved by the others but not welcome for long anywhere. I died once in a great battle centuries ago and was reborn again. I am a balance between good and dark. The power of a demon, the heart of an angel, blah blah blah.”

“B-but what is all this??” Kira motioned to the blood stained alleyway. The stinking remains of some rogue creature of the night that Alex had sliced in half without even a second thought.

“This? This is my job. A job you were never supposed to see. I’m so sorry Kira!” Alex pulled her friend into a tight hug.

“It’s alright – Ack!” Kira gasped as the cold silver of a dagger was plunged hilt deep into her abdomen. She looked up at Alex with wide, disbelieving eyes and breathed out in a dying breath. “Why…?”

The winged half-angel looked at her with the saddest yet coldest eye’s Kira had ever seen. “You were never supposed to see…” She pulled the dagger from the other girls’ stomach and plunged it then straight into her chest, deep into Kira’s heart as far as it would go. “And I cannot change the rules…”

The next morning there was nothing in that alley-way but a few solemn ashes. All records of Kira Korvin were gone as if she had never existed. Rules are rules after all and some are not meant to be broken, no matter what the circumstances.

Rules engraved in the stone made of blood and ashes.