Spring rain pelted the cottage outside, the smells of Elwynn forest brought in through the dining room windows. Like the rest of the cottage, the dining table was quaint, but sturdy, large enough to seat the family comfortably, but not so large as to provide an obstacle to the furnace stove in the corner. It was dinnertime: well-used bowls and glasses poised before each chair. And like any family, parents and children were seated, ready to enjoy their meal.
If Laureth Adler could see through her blindfold, she would see that they apparently were having her husband’s heart for dinner. It rested in his empty wooden bowl, garnished by its own liquids. The smell of blood assaulted her senses--she was still recovering from hearing the death gurgles across from her, and it was getting too hard to breathe against the gag pulled tight against the corners of her mouth. She didn’t have to see the scalpel that had slid so carefully across his throat, or the gaping jigsaw puzzle that his chest had become underneath its linen shirt.
All of her unmasked senses told her she should be filled with dread.
Anisse stared down silently at Ms. Adler as the woman shuddered in her seat, no longer straining against her binds. She had never went after an entire family before, but the ease at which she was allowed inside their home had been surprising. The citizens of Elwynn Forest were far too hospitable for their own good. After the murders she’d committed in Goldshire, one would think a family would keep their guard up a bit tighter. It only secured their deaths in Anisse’s mind: lambs easy for the slaughter. Some were simply meant to be the sacrificed.
There was something far more intimate in meaning in the victims she had chosen than Anisse could care to admit, however. Her gaze rested on the young son of Ms. Adler, on the edge of manhood. He was rocking back and forth in his chair as far as the rope he was bound with would allow him. His teeth were bared upon the cloth gag in apprehension, the occasional whimper leaving him. The younger daughter sat across from him, her small face glistening with silent tears just beneath her blind. She trembled much like the mother, like a leaf. And there sat Mr. Adler, still in his chair. His neck gleamed in the oil lamp’s light, bloody as his chest. Father had a new necktie. A family.
If she could murder them, then she could drown out the chaos pouring into the crack of her mind. Back to beginnings. Back to what she knew.
As much as it pained her to, Anisse picked up the father’s heart within the bowl, and began to squeeze its excess into it. Blood. It was essential in all offerings, the life energy magic in itself. To a demon it was surely sacred.
To the Old One‘s, it was amusing.
The table creaked under Anisse’s weight as she knelt upon it, pushing other bowls, utencils and glasses out of the way. The whimpers and frightened panting seemed to rise all around the table, but it did not stop her from painting the blood from the bowl upon the smooth wood. The circle would have to be perfect if she hoped to gain the blessing of the Twilight’s Hammer again, if she hoped to earn the Voice again. Purpose, to close out all of these…distractions. The circle went unfinished by the time the last bit of blood had been used from the bowl, the heart a used sack of viscera. Another…
Again, the amazing symphony of fear collected around the table, started by the eldest son as he heard Anisse shuffle near him. Feet skittered, the pathetic attempt to get away from her fingers causing the boy to make the chair scoot back a few inches. His muffled pleads set off the strained, guttaral moan of despair from the mother. The boy’s death was quick, but the mother’s suffering in hearing his last breath only went on and on. It was almost a sigh of relief that rattled from the murderess’s lips, to hear the mother sob in such silence, feel the release of life slip from her son.
It felt good to make Mother feel something. Make her cry.
The oil lamp seemed to scream with each flicker of its golden light upon the walls, witness to the desecration of another body, witnessing what the mother and daughter could not. In silence, Laureth Adler mourned the death of her husband and her son, waiting for the moment when the murderer’s blade would be turned on her. Already the mother contemplated ways to save her young daughter. Surely the Light would be merciful? Surely the murderer would know something of mercy upon a child barely out of its fifth year?!
Suddenly, the cottage door crashed open, making all within the dining room twitch, panic. Scalpel in one hand, and the boy’s heart in the other, Anisse felt her heart skip a beat. She had been followed?! The shadow stretched over the light cast by the flickering oil lamp, her eyes fixed upon the figure that had entered. His frock coat in disarray, the Hunter stood in the doorway, his eyes taking in the scene at hand. Shuddering hands leveled their rifle at her, and slowly she slid herself off of the table she had been painting upon. What did she look like in her brother’s eyes? A child? A child painted in blood?
“…wh…what the hell, Anna…” he whispered out in that soft voice, on the fringe of a bellow. The rifle was cocked, ready, and yet he would not shoot. Of course he would not shoot. His eyes were weak, his nerves shot. The mother was wailing now, wailing so loud that one could wonder if she truly was gagged. The split second Quintin Handhour took to eye the surviving mother, Anisse stole away into the shadows of the room and escaped, wordless.
Her scent was still thick in his nostrils, thick in the animal’s throat that begged to be released from inside of the Hunter. He did not follow. As Anisse escaped into the night, she tucked her arms into the loose sleeves of her robes, pathing as fast as she could along the road out to Lakeshire. He’d let her live, but Anisse was still checking her body for wounds. He could have ended it all there, but he did not.
Because he was her brother, and brothers protect their little sisters, no matter what little sinners they grow to become.
Anisse still denied this fact as she denied the tears that were welling up in her eyes.
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