Cooper found herself on her knees as if worshipping a loveless God. Hunched over, fingers deep down her throat as she tried to purge her sins. She gagged, choking around each thick digit, but no corruption was as easily purged.

She was a monster.

It was as if it were second nature. It may have been, lurking beneath the surface underneath her training. A cannon loosely secured. She had lunged at the stranger, pinning her with too-big arms with a new dexterity. She dug her teeth into soft flesh and drank. Seconds passed by in what felt like hours as she drained the woman of everything she was.

A trail of spit followed her fingers as she finally released them, wiping them on bloodied trousers. For all her years in military service, she had never killed anyone. Not like that. She thought that when the time came, when she took her first life, she’d feel detached. Unshaken. Regret couldn’t cover what she felt now. They hadn’t taught that at the Academy. It wasn’t beaten into her at the Temple, either. And now she knelt at the altar of her own shame, the body lay before her in a bitter offering.

Her breath came out, shaky and raw. Fingernails dug into her scalp, gripping so hard that her ears rang. She wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up and sob, but she was better than that. She had to sort this, hide the body or give herself in. Neither option sparked enthusiasm. Still, she dragged her unholy body towards the corpse.

She was still blue, despite being very much dead. Purple at best. Pale corpse stained red, where Cooper could help but finger her wounds and shove said fingers back in her mouth before she snapped out of it and returned to gagging when she realised. Cooper wasn’t like that, you see. She was raised as a glorious warrior, one with manners and grace, one who didn’t throat her own bloodstained fingers. The taste of iron danced on her tongue regardless.

“Omera, what happened here?” whispered Cooper, as if she didn’t already know. As if it hadn’t stained her mind. She had killed someone. Killed an unarmed woman, without hesitation. She drank her blood like some kind of deranged animal. Calling the Goddess made no difference, Mother Death wanted nothing to do with her. The fact didn’t stop Cooper from saying a small prayer towards Omera, for the woman she killed.

“May you guide her in your light,” she said in a soft whisper to grant safe passage, for the goddess to protect the soul she reaped. Her fingers traced the sigil inked into the flesh of her left wrist. The crescent moon and half star of Omera. It was the best she could do without the holy book. Only the captain held the right to carry it from Temple grounds. The only one with the right to give blessings. Cooper didn’t care. It was the least she could do for her victim, captain or not.

She may not truly believe in the Mabrisian Gods but found the gesture oddly grounding. Out of habit, maybe. The woman might have appreciated it, being Mabrisian and all. She might have appreciated it more if Cooper hadn’t thrown herself at her and torn out her oesophagus.

Cooper needed money. This fact alone carried her through many of her actions in the past few months. From subjecting her fiancee to her groaking gaze to tearing out the throat of a stranger. No longer a captain, barely a lieutenant, she made do. Even if ‘making do’ meant ripping through the pockets of a young woman whose life she just ended. The cloth was still warm.

Six copper. She had ended a life over six fucking copper. Too late to pray to Omera, too late to change. Six copper was all that full human life could give her. Barely a beer, much less the transportation she needed. A waste. An utter fucking waste. Cooper wanted to cry all over again.

Unfocused eyes stared at her, half-lidded. Murky grey behind glass lenses. Just some kid. Twenty years old, too young to lay cooling and torn in a foreign land. With a heavy weight on Cooper’s chest, she knew what to do.

The body painted the floor as it slid along the carpet. Cooper huffed, securing her grip on the dead girl’s ankles. She wished that the Academy had warned her about the heaviness of a corpse. Not that it would change the outcome. There was a certain wrongness that lived inside her, one that could not be taught. She’d pry out the broken pieces of herself with bloody hands if she could.

Until then, the body.

No sooner than the corpse passed the centre of the room, the door handle jiggled. Corpse feet thudded to the floor, forgotten. The body was no longer important. Her own body, however, was. She froze. She froze like the sensible woman she was. The door cracked open, nice and slow, before swinging wildly on its hinges.

The bartender stared at her. She stared at the bartender. Moments of unmoving bliss between prey and hunter. Cooper wasn’t sure which one she was anymore. He lunged at her. Her hand came to rest on a sword that was no longer there.

She was a coward. A Gods-be-damned coward. She threw a side table at a man who was half her size wielding what might as well have been a butter knife.

“I can explain!” she yelled, voice breaking. She wasn’t like this. She wasn’t like this. She wasn’t like this. Whatever newfound strength she had to overpower the woman had left her. She picked up a vase just as the bartender nicked her arm. A warning, as she would soon find out.

The knife sank nice and deep into her stomach. So much so that she could only stare. Any sound that escaped her was silent to her. Surprisingly, she wouldn’t miss getting stabbed. Silent whines turned to throaty growls. It was awake again, the thing inside her. The thing that lived beneath the surface. Ceramic smashed against the wooden floor. Her hand found new use around the old man’s throat. It moved almost on its own accord as it pressed down on pulsating vein and thick muscle.

Omera, forgive her, but she couldn’t bring herself to kill. Though she did watch in sick fascination how the man writhed and choked. She wasn’t like that, she had to remind herself. Ignoring the fact that she was, in actuality, like that. His round body dropped to the ground, stumbling back as he wheezed and groaned. Brown eyes bore into her own. Cloth clung to the fresh wound. With a huff, she readied her fists. She never did like fist fighting, her confidence lay behind a shield.

She lunged at him before he had the chance to move, knocking him back. Enough blood had been spilt that day. In haste, she ran, desperately trying to open her only exit. The window jammed, completely unmoving. She growled, a frantic noise deep within her throat. Grabbing a dining chair in blind panic, tossing it at the glass. The sound of smashing reverberated through the small room. The chair bounced and splintered on the ground below. Fingers scrambled over to the cane, now firmly in her grasp. It wasn’t her own. Not the one that was given, but it was enough. She jammed it under her shoulder without hesitation.

She ran, ready to jump, only to be grabbed round the waist and slammed to the ground with surprising strength. A yell escaped her throat. Warm wetness spilt down her side with each twist of her torso. She cursed her short nails as she grappled, attempting to pry the old man’s hands from her. Legs flailed. Her elbow connected with his ribs.

Finally, freedom. She scrambled to her knees and dragged her sore carcass to her feet. Unsteady but moving. She flung herself from the open window, glass catching skin and clothes.

Landing in a lump, she could only drag herself further, forcing herself back to her feet. Easier said than done when her vision blurred around the edges. Nevertheless, Cooper pushed herself off the ground and broke into what might pass as a run, ignoring the pain in her chest and the wobble in her intermittent strides. Running was far harder than she remembered, amplified by her blind spot. She pushed herself harder, slipping and collapsing yet again. The air was forcefully being rejected from her lungs. A weak sound of pain escaped her lips as she pushed herself back onto her knees, slowly getting back on her feet, swaying. She steadied herself before looking around, continuing at a slower pace in order to put as much distance between herself and the tavern as she could.

The town was too quiet for her liking. She heaved a breath, steaming the air before her. Her clothes stuck to her like a second, wet layer of skin. She pulled her opened gambeson tight around her frame, eager to hide her red-stained shirt and hoping that the darkened navy quilting could be seen as spilt wine rather than its true source.

It was Adanak, all right. That feeling tugged at her heart. She wasn’t sure where exactly, but judging from the mountains she was only a stone’s throw away from Southden, the village where she was born. The deep purple of the Ravenflight mountains loomed in the distance, snow—capped and reaching past the clouds into the Glass City of the Gods. As a child she’d always wanted to climb to the top, to be the first to do so, but as she grew older, the dream faded as she took on her duties as a Templar of Omera. Now that she was dead in theory to the Temple, nothing was stopping her from climbing those mountains. She was well and truly free. Free to do whatever she wanted. It was terrifying.

The light was dim and muted by light smoke that came from nearby factories; the air carrying a heavy chill she hadn’t felt in years. Couples both new and old sat around the park, watching their children, or their children’s children playing amongst themselves, chattering excitedly, and creating small structures out of the thin layer of snow on the ground. More ice than snow, really, but Cooper didn’t have the heart to spoil their fun. They reminded her of the children at the Temple she had raised, as Rutherford had tried his best to raise her. She felt a pang of jealousy, which she had quickly buried. She didn’t have the luxury to unpack those feelings just then.

Cold wetness seeped into her boot from where she stood in the ankle—length, frost—covered grass, causing her to wince in both disgust and discomfort. Definitely, time to change. She pressed her hand against her side, the wine red seeping between her fingers. Her breath came out in unsteady puffs of vapour in the air, much like a broken chimney. Heaving a long, deep breath and shuddering from the cold air, she set off once more toward the centre of Southden.

The city centre stood a few miles from the harbour she had awoken by. The buildings were taller than she remembered, sturdier, with more brick than wood. She dragged her fingers through the little lights that coloured the paths in the dimming light, jingling as she followed them down. The air was fresh — fresher than she remembered, smelling of perfume and fresh goods from the stalls that gave her a wide berth. She couldn’t blame them; she would have avoided her as well. Her clothes made her stick out like a sore thumb — not only for the gore that covered her. She was a true Mabrisian soldier in among the nicely dressed citizens clad in far more advanced clothing than has ever been seen in Mabristan. Gone were the tunics and rough shirts, the braccae and the doublets, replaced by clothing she had almost forgotten existed. Modern attire, at least by Mabrisian standards. Easy to wear and quick to churn out.

It hadn’t been this vibrant or lively when she was taken kicking and screaming from her family home by some officer of the law, only to be sold like livestock. She remembered it to be dull, brown, and broken. The taverns she used to sneak into with her sister, Teddy, were now replaced with tall, elegant hotels and fancy neon bars. The ground was freshly paved cobblestone, not the mud paths that kicked up dust when ran across. Pangs of longing ate away at her from the cloying reality her motherland had become. It wasn’t her home, hadn’t been for a while, but she had hoped that she’d feel some recognition. She clenched her jaw. It wasn’t her home any more, hadn’t been for almost two decades, but it hurt nonetheless. Even her grandparent’s house had moved, and her uncle and cousins’ had been completely demolished and rebuilt bigger, grander, worse. Her throat was tight and dry, more akin to sandpaper than (questionably) living flesh.

Her side had slowed to a trickle, though it was in no shape to leave it be. Cooper pressed her hand against the split flesh. It oozed its crimson through her fingers rather languidly. She would not miss this feeling.

Feet dragged along the icy floor, sliding from beneath her. She crumbled once more, chin bouncing off unforgiving concrete. It was harder to get up this time, legs struggling to find purchase. The city folk gave her a wide berth, no doubt writing her off as another drunkard. She would know, she’s done the same in her own line of work enough. Her eyelids fluttered closed without her consent, breathing heavy. This wasn’t death, she knew that much, though it might be easier to fight the visions than it was to struggle against ice.