Blackout
West Point Castle
"Ha, I'm glad."
Rider smiles and chuckles softly. Letting her own head rest against Sia's she takes a sip of the spiked wine. It burns like smokey whiskey but keeps the sweetness of the wine while adding something she can't quite place. It also is [i]very[/i] strong. Rider takes a deeper drink and feels herself slip into the haze of inebriation. 
"I was born Raia Mitsubachi daughter of a small clan of wolf riders. And I was considered to a beauty unmatched by any other in the land. You see in the old society a woman's worth was measured by her beauty and fertility. I was blessed in both regards. My marriage made my father a rich man. I was to be married to Jiro Kusagiri, the Great Liberator. He was a master rider and commanded the largest force of wold riders in the world. I was happy. Until..." Rider takes a drink and swallows hard. "I produced no heirs. All my children were far too early or stillborn. We tried for years until my body was unable to handle the stress. My shame. My failure as a woman. My husband in his frustration began to beat me. And the beatings grew worse and worse. Until my body came to look like this. I almost died on several occasions. I prayed to every god I knew for salvation. To give me a body capable of bearing children so he would be satisfied with me. But they never answered. One night I struck him back. And he beat me until I lost consciousness. As punishment he gave me to his riders for their pleasure. After that I took the beatings quietly."

Rider has pain in her eyes. The weight of that time sits heavily on her soul. But then her demeanor changes, if only just.
"The Father came to me. Time stopped and the world stood still. He appeared out of a darkness so heavy it threatened to crush me if I stared into it too long. The Father offered me the chance to change the world. To rise above what I knew myself to be. I turned him down. I thought, in the back of my mind, that the gods were testing me. I thought they had heard my prayers and wanted to see if I was truly worthy. So I refused and went back to my husband. But, while cleaning his tent, I found a journal. His journal. Everything I suffered was because of him. He had written that it was unfair for such a beauty to exist. That no man was worthy of me. And that he wanted to ruin me for no better reason than affirm his power in this world. I couldn't carry a healthy child to birth because he would poison me. He beat me and scarred my body so I was no longer beautiful. He humiliated me to break my spirit. The father returned. He sensed my change and came to offer his power to me again. And this time I agreed." Rider drinks again her face flushed from the alcohol.

"That night I waited for him and his most trusted men to return from a hunt. I took command over their wolves and in doing so stripped them of their manhood. You see, back then, for a man to be considered a man he had to have a mount. The bigger and more ferocious your mount the more a man you were. To steal another riders mount was the gravest of insults. I fed my husbands riders to their mounts and called on an old and ancient being from legend." Rider smiles at Sia. "Karna created the stars. But before he sparked the fires of life the world was already a vast and cold ocean. Long before any other gods there where two wolves. One wolf's howl created space and dimensions everywhere it went. The other wolf's howl marked the beginning of time. They were the two beings that The Creator brought into existence before all others. However, the spatial wolf grew ill. No one knows how or why but the Wolf of Space died of this illness. Space began to collapse. So the Wolf of Time took up its brothers voice and mixed it with his own. By doing this he merged the two powers together. Space would grow so long as time continued to march forward." Rider smiles with a melancholy and almost bitter expression.

"All I had wanted was to be loved. That is all I wanted of my husband. But he couldn't love anything but himself." Rider takes another drink. "They say that strong women are all gentle deep within their hearts. But I think it's the same for everyone. Take away the stigma of weakness and expectations of strength that we put on ourselves and suddenly it's a kinder more gentle world. We are kinder and more gentle people. Or maybe I'm just drunk."