Chapter I – Vitae

Blood!

The sharp scent of copper, sickeningly dry and metallic, commanded a jolt of panic streaking down her spine as she started awake. The nausea subsided, giving way to a rush of relief, only to be drowned out and replaced by searing pain, no, not simple pain — agony. Her hands, coming into focus through bleary eyes, bore savage burns; her palms scorched through to the muscle below. Oddly, it occurred to her that her palms were not the source of her pain; rather, it emanated from the tattered red and off-yellow skin at the perimeter as she glanced at her open left palm.

Shit. She thought to herself, recognizing the damage she had wrought upon her hands. But she was alive, and it wasn’t her blood. Thank the Sisters.

Indeed, the smell of blood was tinged with that of burnt flesh; this was hers, her body making a poor conduit for the magic she had wielded – Like electricity coursing through flesh, it had scorched its way through the path of least resistance, up her left arm and down into the small gem held in her right. 

Carefully, she pulled at the sleeve of her shirt with painful fingers, revealing an arm that was marred with wicked lines of jagged energy etched across her skin; the red bolts of lightening streaked downward toward her hand and thrummed with a residual power, a shadow of the magic that had passed through her, and she felt oddly empty for its memory. Was this how she had always felt? Dull? Normal? 

Casting the immediate fear of damage aside, although she was certain her hands would blister in the coming days, she turned her attention to surveying her work. For all her vacillations, she had engaged in this endeavor with a surety of its success; the records had been clear, even if the finding of such works had been the bulk of the effort thus far. Knowledge of this kind was forbidden, taboo of the highest order, and as such, had been destroyed or, at the very least, hidden behind centuries of careful and scholarly obfuscation. 

Blood magic. Hemomancy to the intellectually inclined. Although neither title spoke to the true depth of power that lay within flesh and blood, indeed, the physical attributes of the body were but one part of an intricate web of casting that encompassed this artform; it was the truly gifted Witch that knew the power of pain and terror intertwined with the blood and body. 

Pain she knew. Pain was an old friend, although it was a different beast entirely from the pain she had inflicted on the two broken bodies that lay before her. Their cheeks sunken, mouths twisted in a permanent, unnatural scream, with eyes blackened like coals staring blankly into eternity. She had picked these poor souls apart nerve by nerve, vein by vein, extracting every ounce of suffering with the precision of a surgeon. Every scream, every drop of blood, every drip of fear was incalculably valuable to her work, precious not for the destroyed lives they represented; no, these humans were inconsequential, a resource in abundance to be harvested, rather, for her quickly dwindling patience and time.

Turning her eyes away from the spent corpses, Elsewyn looked to the closed fist of her right hand. In her haste and relief at her own survival, she had neglected the very purpose of this venture. Foolish girl. 

Slowly, agonizingly, she unfurled her burnt fingers from that which lay within, and as she did, a deep crimson light spilled out and cast across her arm and chest. A ruby. Remarkable perhaps only for its size, the gem thrummed with a furious storm; deep swirling patterns within raged against their imprisonment with a tempest.

It had worked.