~Sierra~

I'm home now.

You wouldn't know it if you were to visit this clearing for the first time, bit this was once the most beautiful place in the world. A sea of green to envelop us, the moonlight our only light, our peace kept by the woods vast silence. This place was Eden at it?s finest; or at least it was to me. Certainly the buildings weren't much at first ...even I must admit that, although I was quite proud of them at the time. I still am, you know ... there was something about those simple stone structures that pulled my whole world into their orbit. This isolated little universe could have been mine forever.

You must be wondering where we are; didn't I mention it before? This was once a kingdom ... my kingdom. But you see that, don't you? You see everything, the entirety of the labyrinthine behaviors whose motives I would rather keep hidden. Although it should bother me I find it oddly comforting. The world isn?t right without you, I know that now - and somehow I still think that you still hear me.

As I was saying, there was a special magic about this place. Maybe it was that blanket of downy snowflakes, such pure white ... it should have been the village of the Ivory Moon. Their lady was certainly pure white.

The mud seeping up through the bracken infects the polished leather of the first decent pair of boots I've worn in a decade. It will never be white again here again, will it? There are no second chances for the children that used to play in those ethereal fields of moonlight. There are no second chances for the damned.

I am damned. Haven't you heard? Cursed, evil, murderous; that is the only name for my kind now. If you were here - if you could hear or speak - I?m sure that you would find a way to chastise me for venturing to think that. But it's true, all the accusations are true- and I know that what I should feel is the overwhelming melancholy brought on by well-earned guilt.

I've killed, you know. I'm sure that you've seen it during your vigil. The pure, unadulterated life that flows within them is intoxicating to me and no matter how much I ever resisted I couldn't help the bloodlust. Fate, if such a thing exists, has doomed me to watch the crimson fluid wound the snow that is my skin time and time again. It was not mud that fatally stained the White Lady's robes. And I think that I am just a common killer, for my belief in fate died at your hand. Odd, how completely a simple addiction has subdued me when hundreds of stupid mortals have failed in that respect.

The snow left this place just as I did, and I think perhaps that I chill everything I touch. I used to abhor it, determined to protect life at any cost - the White Lady was a healer in power and in thought. I wonder if I could heal again, if I could rise like a phoenix from the ashes and restore this village from the shadows. Doubtful, that. The granite is overgrown and worn by the creeping decay of wind and water. Beyond that there is that certain something beneath the surface of my soul which chains me to my current life. It festers there, in my mind, and I need to exorcise it if I'm ever to really be reborn.

Rebirth is hard work; I should know. There are better things to do with my time ... I don't need it.

I wish I did. I should want to be her ? want to be pure again - shouldn't I?

I'm sure that regret should hound me, and indeed there was a time in which it did. Yet one day I woke up with that familiar sickly-sweet smell on my hands and found that I just didn't care. Seven more lives were taken during the murderer's darkened hours that night. It was a foolish, desperate attempt to somehow regain whatever tidal thrill of remorse had accompanied my previous kills. I should have known better. Something numb within me had grown stronger, and no matter how much mortal fire burns within my body the heat will never warm it. Somehow, I think that it was always in my blood.

The broken body that rots beside me as I think was that of a pretty young peasant, a girl who had years of light left until I snuffed out that brief candle. The corpse reminds me of a side of meat, of the butcher shop that the servants told me I was too delicate to look inside. The carcasses in there didn?t disturb me either, come to think of it.

If Oulan found out about the death I don?t know if she would stay with me. She doesn't understand what is to truly feel the pull of the Dreaming; - that phantom taste of salty skin so painful in it's beauty. Don't worry though, I know enough to keep her from sensing that ... I wouldn't inflict it on my friend. She's done so much for me, I have to protect her from that. Besides, you would want me to keep my friend ... my sister - safe, wouldn't you? It's been so long since Selene sealed herself away. Poor Selene; she was so radiant.

I find myself recalling my Selene and the others less as the turning of the years grinds down my memory. When I?m here though, I can see it like the centuries passed in mere seconds. You have that perfect memory inside you somewhere too, don't you? I had to come back to refresh it, for I mustn?t forget my one great failure.

The mud should chill me as I lower myself into a sitting position, gritty ooze gushing up around my already filthy cloak. It doesn't. The carrion remains of my former life accomplish that well enough.

Mother ... you remember her ... talked to me today. Yes, I realize that her bones are naught but dust now, yet I'm sure you know the story. Do you realize that her eyes are just like mine, exact replicas down to the most minute detail? How could I possibly escape the curse of those eyes? Maybe I really am just like Mama.

She was a survivor, dragging herself up from the streets to marry a nobleman. When I was a child Mama was my hero ... an overwhelming mountain looming over my young existence. A closet businesswoman when most females weren't even allowed to touch money and the leader of a gaggle of high-society cutthroats; that was my mother. Mistress Yashka might not be a member of the High Nobility, but she was ruthless and brave ... her inexorable advance never failing to secure for her whatever she might desire.

They say that you become what you hate the most, and she has been the plague of my memory for more centuries than I care to count. On that one day, the day that my humanity fled me for good, I should have realized that whatever force lived behind those scarlet pupils lived in me. And despite my ramblings here, I can't bring myself to feel disgust instead of self-satisfaction at the thought of what I've become.

Scarlet Lady dances on the White Lady's grave.

Death is beautiful. The peasant girl practically glows in the moonlight. If I could bring her back then she would shine like that forever ... freed from her tarnished, gaudy existence. But I cannot, and what does one insignificant mortal matter anyway? Her blood is on my hands and it feels.. right. It feels like I?m home again. Their blood is in my eyes.

Oulan doesn't understand. She thinks that I break down because I don't want to become Mama. I can't blame her, for until tonight I thought the same thing. She doesn't realize that I transformed into a true Muiret long ago, that I can?t seem to make myself feel a proper guilt, and that those two things scare the hell out of me.

Yet to say that I'm just like Mama..that's a misnomer. Although we are both likely to inhabit nightmare the Mama I knew was a bogeyman of a parent. When I think of her as Mama my soul burns with the burden of pain and regret, but when I think of her as Yashka? I admire her.

I am her.

Good.

Change is good. Still frightening - but good. Watching you I think I must accept the simple truth you must have been trying to teach me for centuries. It's why I'm alive, isn't it? Because for some reason I've kept that capacity to shift that flees in childhood ? and change is the only thing that's really immortal this planet. Revolution is what keeps the world from stagnating, and in our continuous adaptation we survive, we evolve, and we help each other stave off the boredom of the years. That's the real reasoning behind all of this; you can't bear to see me stop changing like the others do. Do they lose their capacity for it, is that why you cast them from your Eternity of Revolution? Do you force them to Dream because anything is better than that fatal stagnation of the mind?

The sky tonight is unclouded, a solid black which could consume the both of us. An Eternity of Order ... you and I were not built for that, just as the tribe couldn?t remain in static happiness for all time. For once.. for once I can feel sadness. They died for my revolution; their blood created the Scarlet Lady.

The Scarlet Moon was already there. I just couldn't see it for the sign that it was. Have the years made me blind, do you think?

Soon we'll be together again ... I can feel it. But you're leaving me now and I must return to my one true friend and my... antithesis, I suppose you could call him. We're an odd group, us three. The soul of a dragon, a soul of revolution, and a soul of order... oblivion would be the ultimate order, wouldn't it? Maybe that's what truly bothers me about the boy; he's not the first I've met to behave that badly.

Or maybe Oulan is just another bodyguard, the boy is simply an army brat turned glorified figurehead, and I'm only some crazy old woman who talks to the moon.

Crazy old woman... if I told that one to Oulan I'd never hear the end of it.

~Oulan~

I'm sitting here by the fire and I feel strangely cold. Lord McDohl is across from me, and we're chatting about Toran, but my heart's not in it.

Sier's gone, and some of what I'm feeling down the bond...

Is it possible for vampires to commit suicide?

She's certainly feeling melancholy enough to make me worry about it.

I can understand that... She was really shaken by meeting her mother. It's funny, but I don't think she understands the one thing that makes her different from Mistress Yashka: Sier's like me: she gives her loyalty back to her people. Her mother, on the other hand, did no such thing. *That* bitch I could have cheerfully killed.

That should bother me more, actually...

Sier understands that, I think: killing, either because you have to or because you want to. Back in Rockaxe, in my childhood, Mama and Papa taught me that death is a last resort, to be avoided at all costs, and for years I really thought I was following that ideal.

Then I met Dag again, and everything I had assumed about my life flew apart.

Dag was a kid in Rockaxe like me: He got refused for Knight training too - or I should say he got kicked out. He liked fighting too much, and I think he hurt one of the other trainees. We were both misfits, but we never really knew each other - until Master Zorin came to town.

Master Zorin was from Harmonia - a *sensei,* or martial arts teacher. He showed up in fall and decided to stay on through the winter. Dag and I both jumped at the chance to learn from him: I wanted to be skilled enough that Lord Gorudo *couldn't* ignore me, while Dag wanted to be tougher.

Dag *really* liked fighting. Master Zorin never really chastised him for it - hard learning, as it were, "is good for you," he'd say if somebody complained. "Better you learn these tricks in the dojo than out on the street where you could be killed. Any of you who are fools enough to die are wasting a season of my teachings, after all."

The first time Dag and I fought, I won. I didn't *mean* to break his nose - even if it *was* satisfying to take the arrogant bully down a few pegs.

Dag and I never got along, because he *was* a bully. Or did he *become* a bully, during that winter? I can't remember. Anyway, when Master Zorin left the next spring, once the deadly Rockaxe winter was over, Dag left with him. I never really thought about it much, except that I didn't have to keep the class bully from pushing the other kids around anymore.

Years passed: My family died, Gorudo cast me out, I met Sierra (though I didn't know it at the time - even now, I can hardly believe it) and I became a bodyguard. I killed monsters, I killed bandits and would-be murderers - I never really thought about it. They were trying to kill my charges, after all: and I offered the chance to flee or surrender if I could. I was a bodyguard, not an executioner.

Then I was down in the Scarlet Moon Empire - the only time I was there before the revolution. I was hired to protect a merchant traveling from Gregminster to Lenankamp, and we were out in the countryside when Dag came walking into our camp. He'd changed: he wasn't the foul-mouthed bully anymore. I let him in, and we discussed old times: the merchant relaxed enough to come out of his wagon and eat with us.

Then Dag hit me from behind. I went down, knocked silly but not unconscious, and I could only watch as he broke the merchant's neck.

I got back up after he ran off, and I chased him down. I confronted him: It seemed he'd been living the life of a hired killer since he apparently left Master Zorin some time back. We fought, and I won, largely thanks to the Angry Dragon. We were right next to Lake Toran, and I saw my reflection in the water as I was about to finish him off - I'd already broken one of his arms in the Angry Dragon
flurry.

My expression was just the same as Dag's had been while he was breaking the merchant's neck.

Dark, sadistic satisfation.

I knocked Dag out and ran off. I left Scarlet Moon territory the next day, unable to get my expression out of my head. It was only then that I realized that I had never felt remorse for anything I'd killed. I felt I had been perfectly justified in ending their lives, for the simple reason that they were opposing me, that they'd broken my moral code. Was that all that kept me from slaughtering all
and sundry? The fact that they hadn't yet justified my actions?

Am I any different from Dag, a hired killer by his own admission? Or am I the same, killing because I like it?

I hope not. I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that Dag hasn't *just* killed for necessity or fro his contracts, but just for the hell of it. If he has - and it *would* fit his temperament - then there's the difference between us. If I'm wrong... then the only dividing line is where we draw the line.

And that's why I've tried very hard to keep from killing unless I have to - because if I let the line move at all, how long will it be before my moral retreat becomes a rout? How long would it take until *my* justification for death became money, just like Dag's? We warriors all tread a slippery moral slope - and Master Zorin taught us that the easiest way to stop a slide on such a *physical* slope is to avoid starting in the first place. Good advice.

Hey...

Is this how Sier feels? My god, if I'm so jaded from a few short years of fighting, how could I condemn her for feeling like that after centuries? No, she'll have killed, and probably a lot: but I don't blame her for it.

Hmm... maybe this is why I can relate to Sier. We both are killers, but our loyalty is unswerving once it's given. We're both tempted to kill, but restrain ourselves. If we looked more alike, we'd really seem like sisters!

Heh. *Blood* relatives. I'll have to tell Sier that one when she gets back.

Looking up at the moon, I wonder if she's seeing it too. And I still wish I could be *more* of a sister to her - I hate the thought of just dying and leaving her alone again.

~you don't have to~

Huh? I must be hearing things... or maybe the Star Dragon Sword's muttering again. Oh, well...