จากในเช้า
This is a non-consent roleplaying game.

PROLOGUE

She looked taller in all of the pictures. How the viewer thought her to look, made how she actually was. She was taller. This was the trick of light. This was her ally. Pausing by the open door to the Ogress tavern, she was shorter, maybe, she could never know. What she did know was that as she turned on a dime into the Ogress on a late winter night –packed, loud, and drunk – she was not noticed. In this same fashion she picked her way through the masses towards the barkeep. He was short, a shrewd looking fellow, with a crooked nose and little hair. His large belly, drooping over an apron, hid a muscled and experienced military figure. This she knew, as he was partly how she was, although less. Taking on a simple expression, one without inquiry or intellect, she quietly asked him for the key, and without a second thought, barely a glance, he gave it to her.

Keeping a smile hidden, for it would surely be her undoing in such a brutish place, she walked the length of the bar and jumped over it, to land in front of the door. The door unlocked silently with the help of a few words, and the traveler opened it only partway, too small for someone less than what she was. What she was allowed her to, with more care than in the bar, skirt around several guards playing at dice. One looked over his shoulder briefly, as if for a fly, and she almost let her emotions carry her away. The large man turned back to the game without expression, arguing some growth in his companion’s purse and some shrinking in his own. She moved to the door at side of the guardroom, and was dismayed momentarily to find it without handle or lock. Knitting her brow, she cocked her head to the side and considered the issue for a moment. Then, fluidly, she pressed her body against the door, as if a lover, placing her hands on the two parallel seams that marked where any normal door would be hinged. She began to mutter some simple phrases under her breath (unintelligible words, spoken in tongues) and after several moments felt the apparatus give way. The door swung open slowly, and only partially, allowing her to fit through in a space that should again have been too small. It closed silently behind her, and only then did the guards both lift their heads, catching some echo of strange words.

The darkness inside this final room was something complete. There was no light at all, despite the warmth of the Ogress and its guardroom. There was a cold that was more than a lack of warmth. She felt it in her bones- a lack of love, of heart, of hope. It hurt her, deeper than a physical wound, but she pressed on further into this lightless chamber, drawn by a faint mewling within. Turning a corner, from what must have been some ante chamber she entered the main cell- and came, finally, upon light. Her eyes could barely make out the source, for although it lit the room softly, his body was too bright still, even in his illness. As he came to notice the presence, the good creature flinched slightly, bringing his shoulders and chin into his chest. She hurt for this, and approached with no disguise, clearing her mind of all interest other than his well-being, which he felt. He raised his eyes in some sense of disbelief, a tremble in his chin, to her face, and a wave of recognition made his body glow brighter. She quickly covered her eyes, and he made murmured a soft apology and dimmed. Her hands made quick work of his chains, which were of an unholy metal that themselves were making quick work of her hands. She did not wince, as she saw what they had done to the skin of the prisoner, to the light of his hands. As they were freed, she carefully took his small, weak hands and brought them delicately to her heart, her life-source. There were tears running down his face, not of salt, but of light, and she smiled in a fragile way. “You are but the son of a god of war,” she murmured, “you never deserved an existence like this, for so long.” “I am a god’s son no longer.” His voice rang through this, the darkest chamber, “I am quick becoming mortal, however much blood my father may have given me.” He began to fade, and his fingertips brushed against her eyes. “I will ensure you safely out of this village, dark one, but beyond that, I can be of no service- for I am free!” With the last word ringing in her eardrums, the traveler’s eyes closed and she felt some abyss consume her. She felt disguised no longer.