Fang of the Goddess

*Many years ago, near Pora Elinu*

                Blood was everywhere. It stained the black and white maid uniform Meliday wore. It was speckled across her skin. It pooled in an ever-growing puddle on the fancy stone floor of the servant’s corridor. She knelt in it, feeling its slowly dying warmth soaking into the tights beneath her skirts.

                Her head, with its crown of exquisitely black hair, was hung low, her bloodstained hands holding that of the Elin laying on the floor before her. Like that Elin, Meliday sported short bunny ears on her head, the appendages drooped with stress and sorrow as she held back her tears. The grip of the blood-soaked Elin was weak, and getting weaker by the moment, and Meliday forced herself to shift the gaze of her sinister red eyes off the bloody knife lying on the ground beside her to the soft blue orbs of her dying friend.

                “Why Mel…why…did it come to this?” Paisley’s voice murmured softly.

                For a few moments, Meliday couldn’t respond, the gravity of what she’d done, of the curve that life had just brought her, too heavy to contemplate. Around her, Elins and Popori loyal to Princess Rida ran through the open servant’s door, their boots often stepping in the growing pool of Paisley’s blood. Shouts arose from deeper within the estate as the loyalists encountered resistance from the traitorous household of Lady Faelyn, Meliday’s now former employer.

                After some soul-searching and silence, Meliday finally responded, her voice cracking, “You know why. She was betraying our kingdom. Betraying nature itself through her dealings with the cult. We talked about it, agonized over it. I thought you agreed with me. I thought you wanted to do what’s right.”

                Paisley tried to laugh, the sound a gurgle of blood in her lungs, “Look at you Mel. What are you? Who are you? You’ve the same bunny ears and tail as I do. The same.. demeanor.. Are you a predator now? Do you think you’re strong? You’ve ruined it all, and killed me. You killed me Mel. How does that fit into the Goddess’s plan?”

                For a moment, sorrow crashed over Meliday like a wave. Everything Paisley said was the truth. She wasn’t a warrior, she was a maid, a servant in a noble household. She’d risen above that to warn forces loyal to the Princess about treachery afoot in the estate, and at the last moment, Paisley, dear, sweet Paisley had stood in her way, had fought her. Would die by the mortal wound Meliday had given her. She was no fox, no wolf to be hunting in the forests, and yet there they both were, Paisley dying, and Meliday struggling to accept that her friend, no, her beloved and the only person she ever cared about, would be gone because of what she had done. There were no words to take back the moments that had led to this. Maybe if Paisley hadn’t tried to stop her from letting the loyalists in, maybe if Meliday had been able to talk her out of standing by traitors…

                No.

                Coldly, Meliday let Paisley’s hand fall from hers. She rose, standing over the dying Elin, looking at her and truly seeing her for the first time as she lay dying in her blood. Around her several of the invading loyalists paused, none of them interfering. They saw the emblem of Princess Rida pinned to Meliday’s dress, and they had been briefed on the servant that had been brave enough to stand for her kingdom. Meliday ignored them all, her gaze suddenly filled with malice the likes of which had never cross her features before. When she spoke, her voice was strong, echoing in the corridors with her conviction, “No, Pais, you ruined it all. You broke our sacred duty to protect our kingdom, to protect nature. You knew what was happening here just as much as I did, and you did nothing to stop it. I did what was right.”

                Paisley offered Meliday a bloody smile, shaking her head, “I hope… you’re happy then. With your rightness. You’re just a dumb bunny in the end, and now you’ll be alone like prey in the forest.”

                Meliday stared down at her dying beloved coldly, her voice now touched with the malice in her eyes, “That is the problem with you Pais. You couldn’t look beyond these walls, beyond what we were given and the privilege it was to work here. I’m no predator, but I’m no prey either. I am a tooth. A fang in the mouth of the Goddess. I understand now why I was made, why I exist. We each have a path to walk, but we walk it together, we are Her will and dream together. I’m no predator, but I was made to fight for her, and to take the lives of those who stand against her vision and send them back to her embrace. Goodbye Paisley. If you are born again, try not being a traitorous bitch.”

                Stunned silence filled the corridor, the Elins around Meliday glancing at one another and then at the red-eyed and angry maid who had brought down an entire traitorous noble estate. For her part, Meliday felt her heart breaking, but she shoved it away, shoved all the feelings away. She was alive, she had done what the Goddess would have wanted by removing a threat to nature, and now she would find a new way to fulfill that destiny. Without another look down, Meliday turned and stalked away from the dying Elin, her shoes trailing the blood she’d spilled, leaving it behind with her broken heart.

*Current Day, Oblivion Woods*

                Red eyes peered through a black leather mask, counting the Deva cultists of Lok gathered in the lower chamber of the cavern below her. Perched on a ledge, Meliday’s body was covered in skin-tight leather armor that blended seamlessly into the darkness. Her long black hair was tied back behind the mask over her face, a black and white bow keeping it in place.

                She counted five cultists in total, two in front of the rusty iron cage anchored in the stone floor of the cavern, and three more by the corridor leading out. Within the cage were several Federation citizens, including a wounded Elin that was the target of Meliday’s mission. Princess Rida did not like it when her nobles were captured and mistreated by disgusting cultists, and as part of the Princess’s intelligence forces, Meliday’s superiors had deployed her to express the Princess’s displeasure.

                Beneath the mask, Meliday grinned as she began to move silently in the darkness.

*********************************************************

                Federation Coordinator Natasha Venik was in despair. The cultists had kept them in a cage for two days now. Occasionally they’d come and take one of the prisoners away, presumably for some foul ritual given the fact that none of them ever returned. They’d wounded a few of the prisoners too, including an Elin that the others whispered was somewhat important. There was little they could do for her though except bind the gash in her leg, and Natasha gripped the bars of the cage in frustrated silence. Any outcry would cause the guards to come into the cage and mete out punishment, but it was almost more than she could tolerate.

                A moment later, Natasha found herself blinking in surprise as something small and black fell from a ledge above them out of the darkness. It hung there for a moment, unnoticed by the guards. She squinted, finally coming to realize that it was a rope and that a tiny black blob, no larger than four feet or so in size, was sliding down almost on top of the head of the nearest guard.

                As the figure drew nearer, Natasha’s eyes widened as she realized it was an Elin rappelling down the rope upside down. The little creature neared the height of the guard’s head and suddenly flipped off the rope and onto his shoulders, a slight ‘snick’ sound the only noise as a coal-dulled blade slid into his neck. Even as he crumpled, the Elin rolled off him, a knife flying from her hands and into the eye of the guard on the other side of the cage. He had no time to react before he was dead, the sound of his body hitting the stone floor drawing the gaze of the other three Devas and causing them to turn to look in shocked surprise at the bodies of their comrades.

                In front of the cage, the masked Elin turned towards Natasha, her voice deep but adorable, the sound contrasting sharply with what she said, “Princess Rida sends her regards. The ledge above leads to an exit that I have…cleared. Get everyone out while I deal with the rest of this scum.”

                Natasha nodded numbly as the Elin scooped up the cage keys off a fallen guard and thrust them into her hand. Meliday turned as the other three Devas drew weapons and began to charge across the cavern at her, their shouts echoing through the torch-lit darkness.

                For her part, Meliday just smiled beneath her mask, a hand reaching to her back and tugging on the ring mounted here. Her four-bladed, three-foot-wide shuriken was in her hand a moment later, the unusual weapon almost akin to a round glaive. She dashed towards the three attackers, her small size counter-acted by her almost unnatural swiftness. A moment later she went to one knee, sliding beneath a sword swing that would have taken off the tips of her bunny ears if she’d not leaned back. She skidded behind the first attacker, her shuriken slicing through the Deva’s tendons and making him fall to the floor.

                Meliday was up a second later, her weapon swinging around and easily parrying the blows from the next of the Devas. The horned creature shrieked in her face, and she silently blocked another blow before shifting around him and impaling him in the side with one of her weapon’s points. He gasped as blood sprayed from the wound, falling away from her and allowing Meliday to use her feet to kick off him, going airborne and over the head of the third attacker. He whirled to strike at her, but he was too slow and her weapon struck him in the throat before he could retaliate.

                In the corridors beyond, cries rose at the sound of combat and shouting coming from the prisoner’s room. Meliday spared a quick glance at the cage and was satisfied to see that most of the prisoners had already climbed the rope. They were just hoisting the wounded Elin up now. Up above, Natasha caught Meliday’s gaze, the two nodding at each other.

                “Hurry, we’ll throw the rope back down after we hoist her up so you can join us!” Natasha shouted.

                Meliday merely shrugged, walking forward and casually executing the Deva whom she had disabled earlier. She pointed towards the roars coming from the corridor beyond, her voice almost filled with desire as she spoke, “There are more coming. Someone will need to slow them down so you can all get out. Go. I’ll join you later.”

                Natasha frowned, even as they pulled the wounded Elin prisoner to safety, she shook her head, “No, there’s way too many of them. You’ll get killed!”

                Meliday shrugged again, her voice behind the mask almost like iron, “I’m a weapon. Weapons don’t die, they break when they are no longer useful. Go and let me do my job.”

                A moment later Meliday dropped a few small orbs from a pouch on her belt. They clattered across the floor towards the opening to the corridor beyond. As shadows and torchlight rose, signifying reinforcements on the way, the little orbs exploded, filling the cavern below with thick smoke that was impossible to see through.

                The last Natasha saw of the brave little Elin was as the smoke began to coil around her boots, her shuriken in her hands as she waited for the horde of cultists to charge into the room. And then smoke obscured Meliday from view.

                A moment later the screaming started.

**********************************************

                Hours later, Meliday made her way through the forest, her mask now hanging from her belt, and a bloody welt on her face from where it had barely absorbed a blow. She was covered in sweat and gore, but aside from a small wound on her arm, none of it was hers. She’d lingered long enough to see the prisoners reach a Federation outpost before withdrawing.

                She’d find a stream to wash off in, forage for some food in the forest, and then be on her way. There was little reason to stay, she’d done her job and there would be many more jobs in the future. It was her way, what the Goddess had made her to do. She knew that now, and maybe she’d always known it. The past was the past, and even if it hurt, it was good to know that one was fulfilling one’s purpose in the world.

                With a grin, Meliday disappeared into the forest, more agile and quiet than even a real bunny would have been, neither a predator nor prey, but instead a fang of her Goddess.