[Fan Fiction][Short][Evelynn] The Night Is Your Veil

You are old. Older than they think. Old as the Shurima desert, as the Freljord, as the night. They wouldn't be able to tell at a glance, with your flawless skin and your luscious hair. You carry the years inside, locked in the crumbling labyrinth you call your mind.

You were human, once. A huntress for your people. You were part of the elite, brought food to the elderly and the children, the ones who couldn't fend for themselves. You fought off invaders, rival tribes. Your hands rent flesh the way your brother's wove baskets and clothes.

He was the gentle one, the wise one. He looked after your father, a humble fisherman. Your mother was like you, she trained you well. Until she was taken by the treacherous cliffs near the sea. She was old; one misstep and she was gone. You wept for her for days, you loved her the most, spent nights casting ragged cries at the wind. They looked up to you to take your place as the head of the family. And so you kept hunting.

You do not remember the name of the hunter you loved. You felt things for him you cannot feel now: warmth, life. He was a man of the bow, so unlike you. You rent with your hands and brawled with the beasts, he stayed afar. He was slender and quiet, with long fingers and an easy smile. You decided, one night, as you thanked the moon for your prey, that you would have him as your husband. The blood of a deer was your ink; the tree, a contract; the night, your witness.

You needed something to prove your worth to his family. Something your father and brother could use to extol your virtues during the marriage arrangements. You had seen him shoot a great boar in the eye the previous day, earning him the admiration of the tribe. He already had his great deed for his family to praise.

With the night as your veil, you cast off into the forest. You would bring something magnificent. A white stag. Elusive, magical, with a guaranteed blessing upon its hunter. Your mind was not on the ground, it was floating in the night sky like a wisp of smoke. You did not hear the movement through the forest, you did not smell the strangers. You found the white stag you had been hunting. You killed it swiftly and without pain, and the moonlight felt like a blessing upon your shoulders. You had done well. You whispered the right prayers over the stag, tied the holy herbs that your brother wove into a rope around the stag's neck, hoisted the animal over your shoulders, and stalked back to your home with victory at your heels.

You would not be able to claim victory for yourself that night. You were not greeted with awe and cheer, but with death. Your home was gone. Darkness had claimed it, brought by a hand that killed and ran. Dark magic was thick in the air, like a miasma of decay. Your people had no answer to such foul sorcery. Your shaman was trained in practical arts. Healing and blessing. They would not have been able to stop a powerful sorcerer.

The white stag fell to the ground, forgotten. Your mind was undone that night. Your past was seared away in a blaze of rage. You would kill. You would bathe in the blood of the guilty. You would rend their flesh with your hands, tear out their limbs with the strength of your fury. The bloodlust claimed you.

You ran for days.

You followed the smell of magic like a hound. You did not rest. You did not eat. You swore you would quench your thirst only with their blood.

You met the sea at the end of your trail. It would not stop you. The waters tried to hold you at bay, but you were too wilful. You could not smell the magic in the salty air, so you let your vengeance guide you. You came upon an island of power. It was brimming with magic under your feet. Untouched potential. You ignored it, it would not matter, it would not deter your revenge. You took to the woods, the animals giving you a wide berth.

Your prey was waiting for you. It was then that you realised you could not kill it, for it was already dead. You tore at it, but unholy metal kept you at bay. You fought it until the sun cast its first rays upon you.

And then the creature killed you.

You were tossed among old roots, discarded. You bled out, growling at the fading moon. Where was your blessing? Where was your boon? You died cursing everything you believed in.

You did not come back, not entirely. Part of you returned, to animate your body like an ill-fitting glove. Most of you bled into the forest of that strange land. You were a shade. An echo of a person, reverberating inside a corpse. But you were still a huntress. You waited for night to fall once more and claimed your vengeance. You tore the creature from limb to limb, laughing at its failure. You are still not sure to this day if you really killed it, but you avenged your people and yourself.

You stalked the lands from then on. You didn't need to eat anymore, but you missed the hunt. It sparkled a distant echo of something vaguely human inside you. Hunting animals grew boring swiftly, so you hunted people. Sorcerers, in particular, you took your time with; you enjoyed scaring them before revealing yourself. For a long time, death was the only thing on your mind. Your death, the death of everyone you knew, the death of everyone you came in contact with.

Years went by. You forgot how to speak, you knew only the language of screams and blood. You travelled the world at your leisure. Nothing would dare stop you. You grew tired of preying upon the unwary, you had seen all they had to offer already; the screams were always the same. You wandered the wilderness for an eternity.

And then, you came across a city. Lights filled every corner. Constructions taller than you could have ever imagined rose carelessly into the sky. Magic permeated the air. People, so many people.

For the first time since you died, you felt something. Surprise, elation, fear. It slogged through you slowly at first, but then became almost an electric pulse inside your veins. You walked into the city unseen, and for the first time in a lifetime, you did not thinking of killing. You listened to these people speak in their language, you watched them laugh, fight, love and live. You saw magic you had never seen before, people casting spells through incomprehensible devices.

The world had changed, and you had sleepwalked through it all.

Remaining hidden, even in plain sight, was easy for you. You learnt their language through immersion. You paid close attention to their customs. You learnt to mimic them. For a while, playing at being ordinary was thrilling in ways you had not felt in ages. But you yearned for more. You began to interact with others again, but you soon discovered that your talents were quite useless in this new age. Hunting was not a sacred task when food was so plentiful. All you were really good at was killing people.

Thankfully, this new age had plenty of opportunities for you. It was trivial to rise to the occasion, to revel in the challenges before you. How will you kill this general, and slip through her hundred soldiers? How will you end this sorcerer, and cross his abjurations? It was all so very exciting. You felt almost real, almost like the huntress of old, rather than a perfect mimicry.

You loved war, it made everything more dangerous. You needed that danger, it made you feel. You were more than a spectre gliding through the earth without a purpose. You were almost alive.

And then it was over. The Institute of War, determined to put an end to your only chance of rising above the slumbering haze you had been immersed in. You couldn't let it go, not now. Not when you knew that there was more out there, that you could hunt it down if you dared.

You smiled when they let you join them. They thought themselves superior, stronger, with powerful magic at their disposal. They thought you would be theirs to command. The very thought made you laugh.

You will rise above them in the end.

Darkness greets you like an old friend. You will hunt. The night, after all, is your veil.