HOME | DD

Description

This chapters cover photo and the nexT will be of terrible quality seeing as I made them 3-4 months ago and had intended to post them at that timE but I ended up procrastinating until now so weLL;;; enjoy I guess-

...
So you want to hear that one in particular, Mmm?

Alright, alright.
Settle down, now.
Are you ready little one…?
-
Chapter Two:
   Bound

Far from the front lines of battle; many miles away from the blood and gore of the war that continued to rage on… Our story begins once more with a young girl - whose name has been forgotten, long lost to the passage of time. Many years ago, there was a small homestead; tucked away deep within the mountains, just beyond the reaches of the war-torn lands. A small nook; a safe place which this nondescript child called home. Sharing it with her mother and father, theirs was a dysfunctional family to be sure; but she had never wished for anything more. It was safe, warm… they were happy; Their days filled with sunshine and laughter. Unbeknownst to them all, there was a dark cloud that loomed over the family, a horrible storm brewing which had yet to begin it’s catastrophic downpour.

It begun not long after she turned two years old. Her dreamlike life shattered; the pieces of happiness she’d once known slipping through her fingers like countless tiny grains of sand through an hourglass. As all things; with time, will change… this girl's fragile home life was no exception.

While this girl may have been unremarkable and entirely forgettable, the circumstances in which she lived, by contrast, were anything but. Since the tender age of two, she was tasked by her mother with the duty to stay home and take care of her father who had fallen ill with the plague; not uncommon, for her time. Meanwhile, her mother left for months at a time to work for enough money to buy medicine to help treat it. All of it was futile, but they grabbed and held onto any hope they could reach; desperately grasping at straws, the kind of people who refused to accept the truth that was right in front of them. That truth was far, far too painful. So they avoided it. And so, the two year old did just as she was told. Every waking hour of her youth was spent worrying for her father's well being-- rather than her own, and every fleeting moment she slept was fitful and plagued by nightmares. Visions of her Father's death haunted her dreams, and his mortality was something which loomed on the horizon with a certain unshakeable degree of inevitability.

For the time the child spent surrounded by death, she grew more and more introverted, her mind twisting in ways that were not normal. As her father's health continued to plummet in a helplessly downward spiral, her true self sank ever deeper beneath the surface. Despite her best efforts, by the time of her fourth birthday, her father had lost the ability to speak, and she spent her days in an eerie silence. Yet still, her’s was a vigilant watch. Her mother returned only rarely now, to bring the medicine and her earnings back, before promptly departing again, leaving her in only the company of her father and the blank, quiet walls once more. She could no longer recall the last time she had seen her mother smile, or heard her laugh.

Six years old, the girl had learned how to take care of the housework all by herself, her father having lost all mobility in his legs and arms. Alive yet dead, the small child was the only thing that kept him still in the world of the living; and by now the only way one could tell that he still lived was because of the sound he made when he gasped for air, which was somehow far worse than the silence of a corpse. A constant death rattle, an ominous ode; lyrics to the music of the damned.
By that time, she had lost all of her childlike dreams and aspirations. Disillusioned and distraught, she continued her duty as if possessed; her day to day movements becoming nothing more than a habitual routine, an exercise in futility. Age ten, she was just as much of a living corpse as her father was. The light had long ago left her eyes, and she never spoke. With no real hobbies or interests to pass time, nor anyone but herself as company in the quiet family home, she lost her sense of self. She became increasingly empty; the hollow body of a doll. Brittle, always on the verge of breaking; still yet to occur, however, was the inevitable shattering of mind and spirit that would leave her irreparable.

An empty, broken vessel, left with only the memory of a soul.

The sun rose and set; and it was the only thing marking the passage of time in her monotone world, which felt as if it were frozen in time. The skies a maintained a now familiar gray; a reflection of herself--a quiet echo of her misery, sounding off into oblivion.

As the sun set on her fourteenth birthday, the moon rising into the sky, the setting sun took with it last wayward wisps of hope she’d had for her father's recovery, the light turning away from her, leaving her in darkness. Her father was living, yet dead.. and her mother? Her mother--if she did nothing--would soon follow suit. She was beginning to exhibit signs the girl had known for so long, far too well-- it was arguably the only thing she truly knew. The signs of decay; the decomposition of one's body and soul.

Her mother, too, was dying; but from what, she did not know.

This family was marked for tragedy, and the warm, fleeting childhood she’d once known was all but too short lived. A glimmer of days past flickered out; a time to which she could never return.

And so into existence became ‘deadeye’, who appeared one day without warning, from the secluded mountainous region she called home. She was a girl whom villagers both greatly feared and fearfully respected. A capable if not uncomfortably morbid young girl, no older than fifteen, who would do any job, for anyone-- for the right price of course. Quickly becoming a revered assassin, thief and bodyguard-- among other odd jobs, rumors spread that she could kill a man simply by looking his way. The girls’ monicker was earned by her chillingly blank thousand yard stare. No remorse, no fear-- no regret nor happiness. The gaze of a dead man walking. Not only was she cunning, she was also strong, and rightfully so; after the years of hard labor in her youth. Despite her china-doll features which seemed fragile, she was sharp as a knife and dark as a night.

She had something to fight for-- a purpose; to save her family; to make enough money for medicine-- to save them. None of this was for her, but for them. For that reason, nothing and nobody could strike even the slightest ounce of fear into her.

A man with the will to live; a purpose, cannot be struck down unless you silence their heart forever. For as long as their heart still beats, they will rise again… but take away that purpose, and he will again become nothing but a man.

She had already done so much for her family-- they were her everything. So when her mother requested to go on a walk together, how could she refuse? She had suspected nothing when her mother had taken her into the depths of the mountains, and still trusted her even as she turned around and began to walk away; under the pretense that she would return soon after retrieving what she claimed to have forgotten at home.

Waiting still as night fell, she held true to her promise that she would wait for her return. Inevitably, she grew tired; favoring a leg she had injured on her hike to what she assumed to be a deserted mountains reach. Except it wasn't deserted, and she wasn't alone. No, for you see; this was a trap. A setup. She was fast asleep when the slave traders came to pick her up, at the location to which her mother agreed. A small sum was paid for her, far less than what was usually doled out as far as human trafficking went-- but it was the sum her mother had asked for. It spoke volumes how much she thought her own daughter was worth. Just enough for supplies to last her and her father for the winter. No more, no less. As our heroine slept-- waiting for the arrival of her mother that would never come-- she was completely defenseless. Waking only as she felt the cool metal of shackles surrounding her wrists and securing with a dull ‘clank’, it was far too late to put up resistance. As she tried to rub the blurry film of sleep away from her vision, she was forced in line behind four other girls, each battered and bruised, and all still more beautiful than she.

But alas; our heroine was not the type to go quietly into the night. She was not the type to give up; for she, despite all the circumstantial evidence, despite the jeering words of her captors and a million different reasons to abandon hope; still believed it was a mistake. Just a coincidence. The young girl could not believe her mother would do this. She simply would not believe it.

So instead of giving up like the other girls had; those wilting violets, she withstood the harsh wind. A stalk of bamboo; unbending and willful. They had already given up on everything, but she would not. She believed she had a mother to return to; to take care of. For her family's’ sake, escape, which to others would seem to dwell within the realm of the impossible; suddenly seemed like it wasn't that far out of reach.

As the days passed trekking through the mountains rough terrain, the crafty captive began to befriend one of the girls. Three of them seemed to have come from wealthy families; stolen out from out under their privileged parents noses, no doubt. They were far more beautiful, yes; but the clue that gave it away to this cunning criminal was that their hands and feet bore no signs of wear nor tear. They were the hands of women who did not work, and had not known suffering akin to this before. Though, one stood apart from the rest. The one she found interest in was a fiery redhead with a certain spark in her eye that wouldn't fade. An old and simple silver band encircled her ring finger; but she seemed to clutch it as if it were priceless. Perhaps that was the cause of her unrelenting spirit. She, too, had something to fight for. Sensing value in an alliance, our heroine began to offer a portion of her dinner to her every night, before one of the more beautiful girls was hauled off to a dark area, for her captors’ entertainment no doubt. The dreary young girl had nothing to fear; the other girls would keep them occupied as she formulated a plan for escape. She had to get back to her mother, after all.

Then, her opportunity arrived. Finally; after days of waiting-- the first part of her plan fell into place. One of the noble girl’s sandals broke, and she was forced to walk an uneven gait and suffer the consequences of walking in the mountains without a shoe. Rocks, branches and the like dug at her feet like the claws of an animal, ripping skin and tearing flesh from bone.

At first, the girl had been reluctant to relinquish her beloved hair clip, but it took only a few hours for her resolve to crumble like a castle made of sand in the wind. Short term, it’s true our heroine lost a shoe; but little did anyone know, she had gained something even better in return.
A hairclip, yes; but things like that were useless if used only for their intended purpose.
No, she had gained something that was currently invaluable.
She had obtained a lockpick;
And therefore, the promise of freedom.

Phase two, with the help of the redhead; who she now knew as Akari, had been easy. Getting their captors nice and drunk. Completely demolished. With a pretty face and even prettier smile, it was easy for her to coax the lecherous men into drinking. That was the dream, wasn't it? Pathetic.

Manipulating men by their base instinct; it had been easy-- far easier, in fact-- for Akari to do than she had initially expected.

All that was left to do now was wait for the night to fall, set free all the captives, and to split off in different directions.

That was well and good; but her plan, for all of its failsafes and foreplanning, did not account for the possibility that after running for hours on end, though her exhaustion and delirium, she would hear her mother's voice call out to her, cutting through the haze of her cloudy mind like a lit beacon.

At first it was nothing but a whisper carried on the wind, the faintest murmur of her name; a slight tickle at the back of her mind. But it grew in strength over time, and after a few minutes one could no longer flippantly dismiss it as their imagination. When she heard it, our heroine followed it; chased it. She couldn't help but do so. Like a moth to the light, she seeked out the origin of the sound; the desperation clear in her tone as she called back frantically through the still night air, wanting nothing more than the reassurance that her mother had lost her on accident-- that she had come back for her, and that it was all just a mistake. That she had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more and nothing less.

The girl ran at a speed she didn't even know she was capable of; the scenery whirring past her in a blur of motion. Had her eyes not been blurred by tears, had she not been so lost in her desperation-- perhaps she would have noticed the signs. Perhaps she would have noticed the brush begin to thicken, or how tree branches seemed to reach out and grab at her hair and clothing from above, ripping it to tatters and scratching at her skin, or how the sounds of the forest gradually transitioned into an ominous silence; a complete lack of ambient noise. Or maybe, maybe she would have noticed the remains of a fallen of talisman barrier, which had rotted over time and collapsed due to neglect-- which lay on it’s side in a patch of dead grass, the tainted air spreading further with each day, extending its corrosive reach on the mountain one inch at a time.

But she didn’t.

All she could see was her mother's face, imagine her warm embrace-- All she could hear was her mother's voice, calling out to her-- calling for her to come home.
Home.

Little did she know, ‘home’ was something that no longer existed; a time and place lost-- only to be found once more in her own memory.

The frantic girl did not think twice when she uncovered the mossy well, nor did she doubt her actions as she bent over the side and reached down as far as her arm would allow, offering her hand. Perhaps, if she were less frazzled-- if she had taken just a moment to question her thoughts which seemed more like facts at the time, she would have noticed that some things were not as they first appeared. For instance, she may have questioned how her mother could have fallen down a well if it was closed-- or how on earth her mother could have possibly gotten here through the dense underbrush; on account of her stature.

But she did not question any of this--
She could not; it was her mother, and she needed help.

A cold, damp hand clamped down around her wrist; followed by another.

...and then another….. and then another.

A force that was distinctly inhuman swept her off her feet, ripping her straight from her sandals, and pulling her down into darkness which swiftly expanded beneath her; an unwelcoming blanket of void. The grip on her forearm did not relent as it dragged her further and further into the murky depths below…

Her eyelids fluttered shut, and the last thing she saw before everything faded to black was the surface of the well wink out of existence.

And then…
She saw no more.

Chapter Two:
    Bound

      End.

Description

This chapters cover photo and the nexT will be of terrible quality seeing as I made them 3-4 months ago and had intended to post them at that timE but I ended up procrastinating until now so weLL;;; enjoy I guess-

...
So you want to hear that one in particular, Mmm?

Alright, alright.
Settle down, now.
Are you ready little one…?
-
Chapter Two:
   Bound

Far from the front lines of battle; many miles away from the blood and gore of the war that continued to rage on… Our story begins once more with a young girl - whose name has been forgotten, long lost to the passage of time. Many years ago, there was a small homestead; tucked away deep within the mountains, just beyond the reaches of the war-torn lands. A small nook; a safe place which this nondescript child called home. Sharing it with her mother and father, theirs was a dysfunctional family to be sure; but she had never wished for anything more. It was safe, warm… they were happy; Their days filled with sunshine and laughter. Unbeknownst to them all, there was a dark cloud that loomed over the family, a horrible storm brewing which had yet to begin it’s catastrophic downpour.

It begun not long after she turned two years old. Her dreamlike life shattered; the pieces of happiness she’d once known slipping through her fingers like countless tiny grains of sand through an hourglass. As all things; with time, will change… this girl's fragile home life was no exception.

While this girl may have been unremarkable and entirely forgettable, the circumstances in which she lived, by contrast, were anything but. Since the tender age of two, she was tasked by her mother with the duty to stay home and take care of her father who had fallen ill with the plague; not uncommon, for her time. Meanwhile, her mother left for months at a time to work for enough money to buy medicine to help treat it. All of it was futile, but they grabbed and held onto any hope they could reach; desperately grasping at straws, the kind of people who refused to accept the truth that was right in front of them. That truth was far, far too painful. So they avoided it. And so, the two year old did just as she was told. Every waking hour of her youth was spent worrying for her father's well being-- rather than her own, and every fleeting moment she slept was fitful and plagued by nightmares. Visions of her Father's death haunted her dreams, and his mortality was something which loomed on the horizon with a certain unshakeable degree of inevitability.

For the time the child spent surrounded by death, she grew more and more introverted, her mind twisting in ways that were not normal. As her father's health continued to plummet in a helplessly downward spiral, her true self sank ever deeper beneath the surface. Despite her best efforts, by the time of her fourth birthday, her father had lost the ability to speak, and she spent her days in an eerie silence. Yet still, her’s was a vigilant watch. Her mother returned only rarely now, to bring the medicine and her earnings back, before promptly departing again, leaving her in only the company of her father and the blank, quiet walls once more. She could no longer recall the last time she had seen her mother smile, or heard her laugh.

Six years old, the girl had learned how to take care of the housework all by herself, her father having lost all mobility in his legs and arms. Alive yet dead, the small child was the only thing that kept him still in the world of the living; and by now the only way one could tell that he still lived was because of the sound he made when he gasped for air, which was somehow far worse than the silence of a corpse. A constant death rattle, an ominous ode; lyrics to the music of the damned.
By that time, she had lost all of her childlike dreams and aspirations. Disillusioned and distraught, she continued her duty as if possessed; her day to day movements becoming nothing more than a habitual routine, an exercise in futility. Age ten, she was just as much of a living corpse as her father was. The light had long ago left her eyes, and she never spoke. With no real hobbies or interests to pass time, nor anyone but herself as company in the quiet family home, she lost her sense of self. She became increasingly empty; the hollow body of a doll. Brittle, always on the verge of breaking; still yet to occur, however, was the inevitable shattering of mind and spirit that would leave her irreparable.

An empty, broken vessel, left with only the memory of a soul.

The sun rose and set; and it was the only thing marking the passage of time in her monotone world, which felt as if it were frozen in time. The skies a maintained a now familiar gray; a reflection of herself--a quiet echo of her misery, sounding off into oblivion.

As the sun set on her fourteenth birthday, the moon rising into the sky, the setting sun took with it last wayward wisps of hope she’d had for her father's recovery, the light turning away from her, leaving her in darkness. Her father was living, yet dead.. and her mother? Her mother--if she did nothing--would soon follow suit. She was beginning to exhibit signs the girl had known for so long, far too well-- it was arguably the only thing she truly knew. The signs of decay; the decomposition of one's body and soul.

Her mother, too, was dying; but from what, she did not know.

This family was marked for tragedy, and the warm, fleeting childhood she’d once known was all but too short lived. A glimmer of days past flickered out; a time to which she could never return.

And so into existence became ‘deadeye’, who appeared one day without warning, from the secluded mountainous region she called home. She was a girl whom villagers both greatly feared and fearfully respected. A capable if not uncomfortably morbid young girl, no older than fifteen, who would do any job, for anyone-- for the right price of course. Quickly becoming a revered assassin, thief and bodyguard-- among other odd jobs, rumors spread that she could kill a man simply by looking his way. The girls’ monicker was earned by her chillingly blank thousand yard stare. No remorse, no fear-- no regret nor happiness. The gaze of a dead man walking. Not only was she cunning, she was also strong, and rightfully so; after the years of hard labor in her youth. Despite her china-doll features which seemed fragile, she was sharp as a knife and dark as a night.

She had something to fight for-- a purpose; to save her family; to make enough money for medicine-- to save them. None of this was for her, but for them. For that reason, nothing and nobody could strike even the slightest ounce of fear into her.

A man with the will to live; a purpose, cannot be struck down unless you silence their heart forever. For as long as their heart still beats, they will rise again… but take away that purpose, and he will again become nothing but a man.

She had already done so much for her family-- they were her everything. So when her mother requested to go on a walk together, how could she refuse? She had suspected nothing when her mother had taken her into the depths of the mountains, and still trusted her even as she turned around and began to walk away; under the pretense that she would return soon after retrieving what she claimed to have forgotten at home.

Waiting still as night fell, she held true to her promise that she would wait for her return. Inevitably, she grew tired; favoring a leg she had injured on her hike to what she assumed to be a deserted mountains reach. Except it wasn't deserted, and she wasn't alone. No, for you see; this was a trap. A setup. She was fast asleep when the slave traders came to pick her up, at the location to which her mother agreed. A small sum was paid for her, far less than what was usually doled out as far as human trafficking went-- but it was the sum her mother had asked for. It spoke volumes how much she thought her own daughter was worth. Just enough for supplies to last her and her father for the winter. No more, no less. As our heroine slept-- waiting for the arrival of her mother that would never come-- she was completely defenseless. Waking only as she felt the cool metal of shackles surrounding her wrists and securing with a dull ‘clank’, it was far too late to put up resistance. As she tried to rub the blurry film of sleep away from her vision, she was forced in line behind four other girls, each battered and bruised, and all still more beautiful than she.

But alas; our heroine was not the type to go quietly into the night. She was not the type to give up; for she, despite all the circumstantial evidence, despite the jeering words of her captors and a million different reasons to abandon hope; still believed it was a mistake. Just a coincidence. The young girl could not believe her mother would do this. She simply would not believe it.

So instead of giving up like the other girls had; those wilting violets, she withstood the harsh wind. A stalk of bamboo; unbending and willful. They had already given up on everything, but she would not. She believed she had a mother to return to; to take care of. For her family's’ sake, escape, which to others would seem to dwell within the realm of the impossible; suddenly seemed like it wasn't that far out of reach.

As the days passed trekking through the mountains rough terrain, the crafty captive began to befriend one of the girls. Three of them seemed to have come from wealthy families; stolen out from out under their privileged parents noses, no doubt. They were far more beautiful, yes; but the clue that gave it away to this cunning criminal was that their hands and feet bore no signs of wear nor tear. They were the hands of women who did not work, and had not known suffering akin to this before. Though, one stood apart from the rest. The one she found interest in was a fiery redhead with a certain spark in her eye that wouldn't fade. An old and simple silver band encircled her ring finger; but she seemed to clutch it as if it were priceless. Perhaps that was the cause of her unrelenting spirit. She, too, had something to fight for. Sensing value in an alliance, our heroine began to offer a portion of her dinner to her every night, before one of the more beautiful girls was hauled off to a dark area, for her captors’ entertainment no doubt. The dreary young girl had nothing to fear; the other girls would keep them occupied as she formulated a plan for escape. She had to get back to her mother, after all.

Then, her opportunity arrived. Finally; after days of waiting-- the first part of her plan fell into place. One of the noble girl’s sandals broke, and she was forced to walk an uneven gait and suffer the consequences of walking in the mountains without a shoe. Rocks, branches and the like dug at her feet like the claws of an animal, ripping skin and tearing flesh from bone.

At first, the girl had been reluctant to relinquish her beloved hair clip, but it took only a few hours for her resolve to crumble like a castle made of sand in the wind. Short term, it’s true our heroine lost a shoe; but little did anyone know, she had gained something even better in return.
A hairclip, yes; but things like that were useless if used only for their intended purpose.
No, she had gained something that was currently invaluable.
She had obtained a lockpick;
And therefore, the promise of freedom.

Phase two, with the help of the redhead; who she now knew as Akari, had been easy. Getting their captors nice and drunk. Completely demolished. With a pretty face and even prettier smile, it was easy for her to coax the lecherous men into drinking. That was the dream, wasn't it? Pathetic.

Manipulating men by their base instinct; it had been easy-- far easier, in fact-- for Akari to do than she had initially expected.

All that was left to do now was wait for the night to fall, set free all the captives, and to split off in different directions.

That was well and good; but her plan, for all of its failsafes and foreplanning, did not account for the possibility that after running for hours on end, though her exhaustion and delirium, she would hear her mother's voice call out to her, cutting through the haze of her cloudy mind like a lit beacon.

At first it was nothing but a whisper carried on the wind, the faintest murmur of her name; a slight tickle at the back of her mind. But it grew in strength over time, and after a few minutes one could no longer flippantly dismiss it as their imagination. When she heard it, our heroine followed it; chased it. She couldn't help but do so. Like a moth to the light, she seeked out the origin of the sound; the desperation clear in her tone as she called back frantically through the still night air, wanting nothing more than the reassurance that her mother had lost her on accident-- that she had come back for her, and that it was all just a mistake. That she had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more and nothing less.

The girl ran at a speed she didn't even know she was capable of; the scenery whirring past her in a blur of motion. Had her eyes not been blurred by tears, had she not been so lost in her desperation-- perhaps she would have noticed the signs. Perhaps she would have noticed the brush begin to thicken, or how tree branches seemed to reach out and grab at her hair and clothing from above, ripping it to tatters and scratching at her skin, or how the sounds of the forest gradually transitioned into an ominous silence; a complete lack of ambient noise. Or maybe, maybe she would have noticed the remains of a fallen of talisman barrier, which had rotted over time and collapsed due to neglect-- which lay on it’s side in a patch of dead grass, the tainted air spreading further with each day, extending its corrosive reach on the mountain one inch at a time.

But she didn’t.

All she could see was her mother's face, imagine her warm embrace-- All she could hear was her mother's voice, calling out to her-- calling for her to come home.
Home.

Little did she know, ‘home’ was something that no longer existed; a time and place lost-- only to be found once more in her own memory.

The frantic girl did not think twice when she uncovered the mossy well, nor did she doubt her actions as she bent over the side and reached down as far as her arm would allow, offering her hand. Perhaps, if she were less frazzled-- if she had taken just a moment to question her thoughts which seemed more like facts at the time, she would have noticed that some things were not as they first appeared. For instance, she may have questioned how her mother could have fallen down a well if it was closed-- or how on earth her mother could have possibly gotten here through the dense underbrush; on account of her stature.

But she did not question any of this--
She could not; it was her mother, and she needed help.

A cold, damp hand clamped down around her wrist; followed by another.

...and then another….. and then another.

A force that was distinctly inhuman swept her off her feet, ripping her straight from her sandals, and pulling her down into darkness which swiftly expanded beneath her; an unwelcoming blanket of void. The grip on her forearm did not relent as it dragged her further and further into the murky depths below…

Her eyelids fluttered shut, and the last thing she saw before everything faded to black was the surface of the well wink out of existence.

And then…
She saw no more.

Chapter Two:
    Bound

      End.