ORIGIN - Bring on the Dark

She arrived here on her wandering legs, remembering this place, remembering the awful memories that made her once both love and hate this place. The bones...the dark...the pain....it appealed to her. She couldn't say she loved this place, couldn't even say she liked it, but it spoke to her, hinting at long dead tales of horror and holocaust. There would be no life here, no miraculous anabiosis for any of the dead here. They would rest permanently, their tragic path through life cut short forever and always.

With a tilt of her head, she almost wanted to say it was strangely romantic, in some sick twisted way, at least to her.

But she wasn't here for the dead. She was here to conquer her shadows. They were difficult and traitorus and though she claimed dominion over them like she did with that worthless stag Vazi, the shadows sometimes didn't listen. Sometimes they tried to drown her, and she couldn't have that.

The memory of Vazi in his dejected voice, his submissive tone, of him crumpling at her feet, made her crack a dull smile.

Let's start with something easy, shall we? She thought, saying it casually to the mind safely inside her prison. The mind paid her no attention, tucked away, asleep, dreaming her peaceful dreams.

"......."

The shadows barely listened to her, the very edges of them around her form bending to her will. She snarled and stomped, feeling rage roil in her gut. This was pathetic! She was the master of shadows, she was one herself! She called out names, hissed and spat, the raging sea in her responding to her loathing, and her gem eye spat out more sewage in response to her.

The shadows chose to listen to her now, as she took a strict hand to them and choked them in her grip like she would a disobedient dog.

"There....isn't that better?" She hissed sweetly, the shadows answering her will, and she reveled in their familiar cold touch.

"......."

She flexed the shadows that rolled over her like extensions of her, feeling them listen to and obey their master. As was good and proper. She would settle for nothing less than complete and utter obedience.

At the thought, the memory flashed to when Vazi demanded much the same, right before he broke Bartos' leg, and she smiled. That was a good day. It caused her to run away and it allowed the darkness to take her over completely. It was instrumental to her birth, and she relished it.

Of course, Vazi was a piece of filth who deserved no recognition whatsoever, but she could still recognize a great day in cave history.

Again she collected up her shadows and controlled them as they moved across her form, knowing she had complete mastery of them, and she rather thought she was warmed up enough for something stronger.

"......."

With that same ease and the same control, she moved her focus from herself to the shadows underneath her and those of the bones around her. She remembered the story Clover had told, where the shadow king had killed so many and taken their shades for his cloak, and on a whim and a hollow smile, she gathered them up and made that same cloak that trailed on and on and on, over the hills and hillocks of bones, twisting into a pure black river of death.

And some say she was a morbid soul.

"......."

She settled down on the bones now, satisfied with her cloak of death, and liked to imagine she was lying on freshly dead bodies, the smell of rotting carrion filling her nose.

She needed something....She needed something fit for her, a crown among the dead. the shadow realized that, after all this time, no one knew what name to call her as they let out their dying breath, cursing her with hteir last vestiges of hatred. It wasn't exactly appropriate that they curse Clover, after all; Clover would have nothing to do with it, more's the pity.

She smiled. Unless it was about Vazi, at any road.

But she needed a name. A proper one, one that showed her roots, but stood out. One with grace and elegance and beauty, but with a sense of horror underneath once one realized what it meant.

Something like....Belladonna. Such a beautiful, poisonous plant that would kill as soon as one swallowed. It was perfect.

"......."

Belladonna stood, feeling powerful and changed. Canis was really beginning to grow on her; perhaps she'd return in case she was in need of a place to ponder, somewhere that really spoke to her. She felt so at home here among the dead and the once fresh carrion, and she half wished she could feel love, if only about this place. It was beautiful.

She gathered up her cloak and left the room. She had others to torture, after all. Couldn't spend all day just gracing her presence with the dead, after all.

[exit Belladonna]

"......."